Shorewood, IL 60404 Frost Dates
60404, near Shorewood, IL: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/19, about 234 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/25, roughly 188 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 5b (-15 to -10°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 Shorewood, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Shorewood's growing season runs out in roughly 8 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 Shorewood's last frost
04/19 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/03 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/07 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Shorewood against the rest of the dataset
About 188 days separate Shorewood's last and first frost, putting it 21,880 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IL, it ranks 666 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 60404: local microclimates, on what one yard in Shorewood can differ from the 60404 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Shorewood's frost date answer different questions.