Surprise, AZ 85361 Frost Dates
85361, near Surprise, AZ: the frost window
Around 02/05 is the usual last spring frost, about 161 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 12/11, roughly 306 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 Surprise, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Surprise'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.
The actual range around Surprise's last frost
02/05 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 01/06 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 03/03 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Surprise against the rest of the dataset
Surprise's growing season runs about 306 days, ranking 3,685 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within AZ, it ranks 241 of 506.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 85361: local microclimates, on what one yard in Surprise can differ from the 85361 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 9b and Surprise's frost date answer different questions.