Santa Fe, NM 87503 Frost Dates
87503, near Santa Fe, NM: the frost window
Around 05/02 is the usual last spring frost, about 247 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/17, roughly 167 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 6b (-5 to 0°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 Santa Fe, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Santa Fe'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 Santa Fe's last frost
05/02 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/19 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/14 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Santa Fe against the rest of the dataset
About 167 days separate Santa Fe's last and first frost, putting it 29,840 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within NM, it ranks 219 of 427.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 87503: local microclimates, on what one yard in Santa Fe can differ from the 87503 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 6b and Santa Fe's frost date answer different questions.