Waite Park, MN 56387 Frost Dates
56387, near Waite Park, MN: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 05/03, roughly 248 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/07, roughly 155 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 4b (-25 to -20°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 Waite Park, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Waite Park'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 Waite Park's last frost
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.
Waite Park against the rest of the dataset
About 155 days separate Waite Park's last and first frost, putting it 33,943 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within MN, it ranks 348 of 943.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 56387: the frost range, on how to read the range around Waite Park's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Waite Park can differ from the 56387 normal.