Cape Girardeau, MO 63703 Frost Dates
63703, near Cape Girardeau, MO: the frost window
Around 04/05 is the usual last spring frost, about 220 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/25, roughly 201 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 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 Cape Girardeau, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Cape Girardeau'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 Cape Girardeau's last frost
04/05 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/19 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/21 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Cape Girardeau against the rest of the dataset
About 201 days separate Cape Girardeau's last and first frost, putting it 17,449 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within MO, it ranks 365 of 1,129.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 63703: local microclimates, on what one yard in Cape Girardeau can differ from the 63703 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Cape Girardeau's frost date answer different questions.