Frost/Freeze Program

Most NWS offices serving the Northeast will continue an experiment this Fall to improve services related to the Frost/Freeze Program

The National Weather Service`s (NWS) Frost/Freeze Program consists of issuing Frost Advisories, Freeze Warnings or Hard Freeze Warnings when cold temperatures potentially threaten tender vegetation and crops during the climatological growing season. The growing season is defined by the period of time between the median date of the last Spring Freeze and the median date of the first Fall Freeze.

Currently, the ending of the issuance of Frost/Freeze headlines for a season is based on the occurrence of a freeze in one weather forecast zone or two weeks after the median first Fall Freeze date. This approach was confusing to many users as meteorological conditions often led to a patchwork approach of ending the NWS frost/freeze program across multiple weather forecast zones and NWS offices.

The NWS forecast offices serving most of the Northeast (Burlington VT, Gray ME, Caribou ME, Boston/Norton MA, Albany NY, Buffalo NY, Binghamton, NY, New York NY) will continue an experimental program service during the fall of 2023. The purpose of this experimental program is to streamline the Frost/Freeze program for simplified customer usability.

This experiment means that Frost/Freeze headlines will be issued for any threat of a frost/freeze during the growing season up to the 75-90th percentile of the median first Fall Freeze, established by using 30 year temperature averages, basically up to 10 days after the median first fall freeze. The following are the climatologically defined areas and their respective 75-90th percentile of a first fall freeze, after which frost/freeze headlines will no longer be issued.

October 21st: Yates, Seneca, Southern Cayuga, and Onondaga Counties in NY; Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties PA.

October 11th: Remainder of NWS Binghamton counties in Central NY-Northeast PA

Again, our goal is to streamline the frost/freeze process, by using defined closing dates, which should make it easier and aid in planning decisions for our users.

A detailed handout with Median Last Spring and First Fall Freeze climatology can be found at: https://www.weather.gov/media/bgm/frostfreeze_2023.pdf

If you have any questions or comments on this experiment, please reach out to;

Mark Pellerito, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at mark.pellerito@noaa.gov

or call 607-770-9531.