Cottonwood, AZ 86325 Frost Dates
86325, near Cottonwood, AZ: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 03/30, roughly 214 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/10, roughly 223 days after the last spring frost.
Cottonwood sits in USDA Zone 8b (15 to 20°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
Cottonwood's growing season runs out in roughly 11 weeks — a cold frame or greenhouse kit is the usual way to keep cool-weather crops going past the first frost.
Why 03/30 isn't a guarantee
03/30 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 03/09 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 04/21 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Cottonwood against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 223 frost-free days, Cottonwood places 12,041 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within AZ, it ranks 343 of 506.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 86325: local microclimates, on what one yard in Cottonwood can differ from the 86325 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 8b and Cottonwood's frost date answer different questions.