Fort Smith, AR 72903 Frost Dates
72903, near Fort Smith, AR: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/25, roughly 209 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/06, roughly 224 days after the last spring frost.
Fort Smith 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
Fort Smith's growing season runs out in roughly 10 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
Why 03/25 isn't a guarantee
03/25 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/04 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/11 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Fort Smith against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 224 frost-free days, Fort Smith places 11,715 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within AR, it ranks 328 of 687.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 72903: local microclimates, on what one yard in Fort Smith can differ from the 72903 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8a and Fort Smith's frost date answer different questions.