Hot Springs, AR 71901 Frost Dates
71901, near Hot Springs, AR: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/19, roughly 203 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/13, roughly 239 days after the last spring frost.
Hot Springs sits in USDA Zone 8a (10 to 15°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
Hot Springs's growing season runs out in roughly 11 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
How much risk comes with planting early here
03/19 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/01 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/07 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Hot Springs against the rest of the dataset
About 239 days separate Hot Springs's last and first frost, putting it 8,776 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within AR, it ranks 97 of 687.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 71901: zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and Hot Springs's frost date answer different questions, and the frost range, on how to read the range around Hot Springs's dates instead of trusting one.