Patoka, IL 62875 Frost Dates
62875, near Patoka, IL: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/09, roughly 224 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/26, roughly 197 days after the last spring frost.
Patoka 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
Patoka'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 Patoka's last frost
04/09 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/25 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/23 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Patoka against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 197 frost-free days, Patoka places 18,787 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within IL, it ranks 322 of 1,548.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 62875: local microclimates, on what one yard in Patoka can differ from the 62875 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Patoka's frost date answer different questions.