Montrose, CO 81401 Frost Dates
81401, near Montrose, CO: the frost window
Around 04/28 is the usual last spring frost, about 243 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/14, roughly 167 days after the last spring frost.
Montrose sits in USDA Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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
Montrose's growing season runs out in roughly 7 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 Montrose's last frost
04/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/13 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/12 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Montrose against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 167 frost-free days, Montrose places 29,886 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within CO, it ranks 23 of 624.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 81401: local microclimates, on what one yard in Montrose can differ from the 81401 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Montrose's frost date answer different questions.