Bloomington, IL 61799 Frost Dates
61799, near Bloomington, 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.
Bloomington 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
Bloomington'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 Bloomington'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.
Bloomington against the rest of the dataset
About 172 days separate Bloomington's last and first frost, putting it 28,133 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IL, it ranks 1,333 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 61799: the frost range, on how to read the range around Bloomington's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Bloomington can differ from the 61799 normal.