St. Joseph, MN 56374 Frost Dates
St. Joseph, MN: when does the frost end?
Around 05/03 is the usual last spring frost, about 248 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/07, roughly 155 days after the last spring frost.
St. Joseph sits in USDA Zone 4b (-25 to -20°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 6 weeks until St. Joseph'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
05/03 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/21 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.
St. Joseph against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 155 frost-free days, St. Joseph places 33,946 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within MN, it ranks 349 of 943.
Learn more
Before leaning on 56374's figures: local microclimates explains what one yard in St. Joseph can differ from the 56374 normal, while zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 4b and St. Joseph's frost date answer different questions.