Hills, IA 52235 Frost Dates
52235, near Hills, IA: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/29, roughly 244 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/09, roughly 162 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5b (-15 to -10°F average annual minimum) comes from the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map; the frost dates above are the 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting NOAA station for Hills, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Hills's growing season runs out in roughly 6 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
The actual range around Hills's last frost
04/29 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/14 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/14 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Hills against the rest of the dataset
Hills's growing season runs about 162 days, ranking 31,808 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within IA, it ranks 712 of 1,042.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 52235: local microclimates, on what one yard in Hills can differ from the 52235 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Hills's frost date answer different questions.