Cook, NE 68329 Frost Dates
68329, near Cook, NE: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/26, roughly 241 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/10, roughly 164 days after the last spring frost.
Cook 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
Cook's growing season runs out in roughly 6 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 Cook's last frost
04/26 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/12 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/11 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Cook against the rest of the dataset
About 164 days separate Cook's last and first frost, putting it 31,172 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NE, it ranks 328 of 605.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 68329: local microclimates, on what one yard in Cook can differ from the 68329 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 5b and Cook's frost date answer different questions.