Galesburg, IL 61401 Frost Dates
61401, near Galesburg, IL: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 04/20, about 235 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/19, roughly 180 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 Galesburg, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Galesburg'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 Galesburg's last frost
04/20 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/06 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/05 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Galesburg against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 180 frost-free days, Galesburg places 24,786 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IL, it ranks 953 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 61401: local microclimates, on what one yard in Galesburg can differ from the 61401 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Galesburg's frost date answer different questions.