Scotts Valley, CA 95041 Frost Dates
95041, near Scotts Valley, CA: the frost window
The last spring frost here typically falls around 03/25, about 209 days from today. Fall's first freeze usually shows up around 11/11, roughly 231 days after the last spring frost.
Zone 9a (20 to 25°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 Scotts Valley, not a forecast for this year.
Stretching the season past the first frost
Scotts Valley'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.
The actual range around Scotts Valley's last frost
03/25 is the middle of 30 years of NOAA records, not a promise. Getting tender plants in by 02/17 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.
Scotts Valley against the rest of the dataset
About 231 days separate Scotts Valley's last and first frost, putting it 10,165 of 40,283 ZIP codes nationally. Within CA, it ranks 2,172 of 2,555.
Learn more
Two guides worth reading on 95041: local microclimates, on what one yard in Scotts Valley can differ from the 95041 normal, and zone vs. frost date, on why Zone 9a and Scotts Valley's frost date answer different questions.