Muncie, IL 61857 Frost Dates
61857, near Muncie, IL: the frost window
Around 04/20 is the usual last spring frost, about 235 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/21, roughly 182 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 Muncie, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Muncie'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 Muncie's last frost
04/20 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/07 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.
Muncie against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 182 frost-free days, Muncie places 24,350 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IL, it ranks 913 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 61857: local microclimates, on what one yard in Muncie can differ from the 61857 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6a and Muncie's frost date answer different questions.