Gettysburg, SD 57442 Frost Dates
57442, near Gettysburg, SD: the frost window
Around 05/14 is the usual last spring frost, about 259 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 09/29, roughly 138 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 Gettysburg, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Gettysburg's growing season runs out in roughly 5 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 Gettysburg's last frost
05/14 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/30 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/25 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Gettysburg against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 138 frost-free days, Gettysburg places 37,418 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within SD, it ranks 330 of 378.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 57442: local microclimates, on what one yard in Gettysburg can differ from the 57442 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 4b and Gettysburg's frost date answer different questions.