El Centro, CA 92243 Frost Dates
El Centro, CA: when does the frost end?
Around 01/03 is the usual last spring frost, about 128 days away. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 12/27, roughly 363 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 10a (30 to 35°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 El Centro, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
With roughly 17 weeks until El Centro's first fall frost, a row cover or cold frame is what stretches the last few weeks of harvest here.
The actual range around El Centro's last frost
01/03 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 02/04 carries real risk, frost has hit that late in about 9 of 10 years here. Wait until 12/15 and only about 1 year in 10 sees frost after that.
El Centro against the rest of the dataset
About 363 days separate El Centro's last and first frost, putting it 2,042 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within CA, it ranks 930 of 2,555.
Learn more
Before leaning on 92243's figures: the frost range explains how to read the range around El Centro's dates instead of trusting one, while local microclimates explains what one yard in El Centro can differ from the 92243 normal.