North Chicago, IL 60064 Frost Dates
60064, near North Chicago, IL: the frost window
Around 04/30 is the usual last spring frost, about 245 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/19, roughly 170 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6a (-10 to -5°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 North Chicago, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
North Chicago's growing season runs out in roughly 7 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 North Chicago's last frost
04/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/15 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/14 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
North Chicago against the rest of the dataset
About 170 days separate North Chicago's last and first frost, putting it 28,897 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IL, it ranks 1,384 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 60064: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and North Chicago's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around North Chicago's dates instead of trusting one.