Fort Sumner, NM 88136 Frost Dates
88136, near Fort Sumner, NM: the frost window
Typically, the last spring freeze lands around 04/28, roughly 243 days out. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 10/16, roughly 171 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 Fort Sumner, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Fort Sumner'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 Fort Sumner's last frost
04/28 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 04/14 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 05/09 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
Fort Sumner against the rest of the dataset
Fort Sumner's growing season runs about 171 days, ranking 28,746 of 40,283 US ZIP codes measured here, longest to shortest. Within NM, it ranks 209 of 427.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 88136: the frost range, on how to read the range around Fort Sumner's dates instead of trusting one, and local microclimates, on what one yard in Fort Sumner can differ from the 88136 normal.