Normal, IL 61761 Frost Dates
61761, near Normal, IL: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/25, roughly 240 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/16, roughly 172 days after the last spring frost.
Normal sits in USDA Zone 6a (-10 to -5°F average annual minimum). The dates above are NOAA's 1991-2020 normal at the nearest reporting station, a 30-year average, not a forecast.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Normal'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 Normal's last frost
04/25 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/11 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/11 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Normal against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 172 frost-free days, Normal places 28,154 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IL, it ranks 1,334 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 61761: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Normal's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Normal's dates instead of trusting one.