Prescott, AZ 86305 Frost Dates
86305, near Prescott, AZ: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/27, roughly 242 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/24, roughly 178 days after the last spring frost.
Prescott sits in USDA Zone 7b (5 to 10°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
Prescott's growing season runs out in roughly 8 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 Prescott's last frost
04/27 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/10 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/18 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Prescott against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 178 frost-free days, Prescott places 25,573 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within AZ, it ranks 428 of 506.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 86305: the frost range, on how to read the range around Prescott's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Prescott can differ from the 86305 normal.