When is the the last spring frost in Hancock County and first fall frost?
Question:
When is the the last spring frost in Hancock County and first fall frost?
Answer:
Jonathan Foster, Home Horticulture Outreach Professional
The short answer is somewhere in the neighborhood of May 6th for last and October 2nd for first.
Longer answer: as you no doubt know, frost dates are always an informed guess kind of statistic, drawn from weather data compiled over time plus recent trends. So the disclaimer is that we can’t guarantee Maine won’t get a cold snap outside the parameters–in fact, the accuracy of the model is put at 30% for last and first light frosts (temperatures just below freezing, killing tender plants but not hardier ones). Harder frosts will normally be earlier in the spring and later in the fall.
The Farmers Almanac website has a nice frost calculator here, drawing its data from the National Center for Environmental Information. I put in Ellsworth, but the closest climate monitoring station is Orono–those more detailed results are here. You can probably cheat a couple of days earlier in spring and later in fall if you’re closer to the coast.
Happy Gardening.