Kirtland, NM 87417 Frost Dates
87417, near Kirtland, NM: the frost window
Around 05/12 is the usual last spring frost, about 257 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/04, roughly 143 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 7a (0 to 5°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 Kirtland, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Kirtland's growing season runs out in roughly 5 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 Kirtland's last frost
05/12 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/29 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/29 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Kirtland against the rest of the dataset
At roughly 143 frost-free days, Kirtland places 36,587 of 40,283 ZIP codes in this dataset. Within NM, it ranks 320 of 427.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 87417: local microclimates, on what one yard in Kirtland can differ from the 87417 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 7a and Kirtland's frost date answer different questions.