National Weather Service (NWS) offices that serve New York State and New England will be in an experiment this fall to help improve the frost and freeze program.

What You Need To Know

  • The NWS issues Frost Advisories, Freeze Warnings and Hard Freeze Warnings

  • They issue those to alert people of when they need to protect their plants and crops from cold weather

  • The experiment will end the issuance of frost and freeze headlines by date

When it gets cold enough to threaten sensitive plants and crops, the National Weather Service will issue a Frost Advisory, Freeze Warning or Hard Freeze Warning.

However, they only issue those during the climatological growing season, which is the period between the average date of the last spring freeze and the average date of the first fall freeze.

As it stands right now, the NWS stops issuing frost and freeze weather alerts once a freeze happens in a particular forecast zone, or two weeks after the median first fall freeze date.

However, this approach turned out to be confusing to people.

As a result, the NWS offices that serve New York State and New England will all be a part of an experiment this upcoming fall.

The goal is to streamline the frost and freeze process by utilizing set closing dates, making it easier for more people to use that information to aid in their planning decisions. 

This experiment will simplify the season during which the NWS issues frost and freeze headlines to include the entire growing season, climatologically speaking, as well as the following ten days.

A freeze will not bring the end of the frost and freeze program during this experiment. The hope is to better account for people taking effective measures to protect their plants from an early frost or freeze.

(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

For parts of Upstate New York this upcoming fall, the median date of the first freeze for Cattaraugus, Allegany and Wyoming Counties will be Oct. 1, with a program end date of Oct. 11. 

For Erie, Chautauqua, Genesee, Orleans, Monroe, Wayne, Livingston, Ontario and Cayuga Counties, it’ll be 10 days behind. So, the median date is Oct. 11 and the end date will be the 21st.

Find out the dates in western New York, northern New York, eastern New York, western Maine and eastern Maine.

After those dates, the National Weather Service will not issue any more frost or freeze headlines until the program resumes in the spring.

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