New London, IA 52645 Frost Dates
52645, near New London, IA: the frost window
Around 04/30 is the usual last spring frost, about 245 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/10, roughly 163 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 New London, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
New London'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 New London's last frost
04/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/13 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.
New London against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 163 frost-free days, New London places 31,409 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IA, it ranks 663 of 1,042.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 52645: local microclimates, on what one yard in New London can differ from the 52645 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and New London's frost date answer different questions.