Carter Lake, IA 68152 Frost Dates
Carter Lake, IA: when does the frost end?
Around 04/16 is the usual last spring frost, about 231 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/18, roughly 183 days after the last spring frost.
Carter Lake sits in USDA Zone 5b (-15 to -10°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
With roughly 7 weeks until Carter Lake's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
How much risk comes with planting early here
04/16 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/02 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/06 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Carter Lake against the rest of the dataset
About 183 days separate Carter Lake's last and first frost, putting it 23,854 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within IA, it ranks 80 of 1,042.
Learn more
Before leaning on 68152's figures: zone vs. frost date explains why Zone 5b and Carter Lake's frost date answer different questions, while the frost range explains how to read the range around Carter Lake's dates instead of trusting one.