Golden Gate, IL 62843 Frost Dates
62843, near Golden Gate, IL: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/04, roughly 219 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/28, roughly 206 days after the last spring frost.
Golden Gate sits in USDA Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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
Golden Gate's growing season runs out in roughly 9 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/04 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/20 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/20 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Golden Gate against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 206 frost-free days, Golden Gate places 16,152 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IL, it ranks 107 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 62843: the frost range, on how to read the range around Golden Gate's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Golden Gate can differ from the 62843 normal.