Houston, TX 77263 Frost Dates
77263, near Houston, TX: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 02/13, about 169 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 12/09, roughly 300 days after the last spring frost.
Houston sits in USDA Zone 9b (25 to 30°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
Houston's growing season runs out in roughly 15 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
02/13 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 01/12 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 03/12 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Houston against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 300 frost-free days, Houston places 4,045 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within TX, it ranks 377 of 2,558.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 77263: local microclimates, on what one yard in Houston can differ from the 77263 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 9b and Houston's frost date answer different questions.