Stratford, SD 57474 Frost Dates
57474, near Stratford, SD: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 05/06, about 251 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 09/29, roughly 144 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 4a (-30 to -25°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 Stratford, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Stratford'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 Stratford's last frost
05/06 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/25 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/20 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Stratford against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 144 frost-free days, Stratford places 36,479 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within SD, it ranks 264 of 378.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 57474: local microclimates, on what one yard in Stratford can differ from the 57474 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 4a and Stratford's frost date answer different questions.