FrostDateCheck

Iowa, LA 70630 Frost Dates

70630, near Iowa, LA: the frost window

Zone 9b

Around 02/14 is the usual last spring frost, about 170 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 12/07, roughly 299 days after the last spring frost.

Zone 9b (25 to 30°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 Iowa, not a forecast for this year.

Stretching the season past the first frost

Iowa's growing season runs out in roughly 14 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 Iowa's last frost

02/14 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 01/16 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 03/11 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.

Iowa against the rest of the dataset

At roughly 299 frost-free days, Iowa places 4,168 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within LA, it ranks 187 of 710.

Learn more

Two guides worth reading on 70630: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 9b and Iowa's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Iowa's dates instead of trusting one.