Fort Atkinson, WI 53538 Frost Dates
Fort Atkinson, WI: when does the frost end?
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/28, roughly 243 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/13, roughly 166 days after the last spring frost.
Fort Atkinson sits in USDA Zone 5b (-15 to -10°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 7 weeks until Fort Atkinson's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/28 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 05/17 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Fort Atkinson against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 166 frost-free days, Fort Atkinson places 30,310 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within WI, it ranks 171 of 860.
Learn more
Before leaning on 53538's figures: zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 5b and Fort Atkinson's frost date answer different questions, while the frost range explains how to read the range around Fort Atkinson's dates instead of trusting one.