Waukegan, IL 60085 Frost Dates
Waukegan, IL: when does the frost end?
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 Waukegan, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 7 weeks until Waukegan's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
The actual range around Waukegan'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.
Waukegan against the rest of the dataset
About 170 days separate Waukegan's last and first frost, putting it 28,881 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IL, it ranks 1,383 of 1,548.
Learn more
Before leaning on 60085's figures: zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 6a and Waukegan's frost date answer different questions, while the frost range explains how to read the range around Waukegan's dates instead of trusting one.