Free tool
Frost dates for your area
The short answer
There is no single UK frost date. Between 1996 and 2025, air frosts in May averaged anything from none (the Cornish coast, Heathrow, Anglesey) to 4.9 days (Braemar in the Cairngorms). Every lowland English station averaged under one May frost, and several averaged none, but inland sites in the Midlands, the North East and Somerset still see one in some years.
Across 1050 UK gardens in Vercro, the last air frost is typically around mid April, but in 1 year in 10 there is still one after early May. That is why Vercro times tomatoes outside from about mid May for a typical garden, not from the usual last frost.
Your area's usual last spring and first autumn frost, from your postcode, and how often frosts actually fall month by month at Met Office stations across the UK.
Look up your area
How often frosts fall, month by month
Average days of air frost per month over thirty years at eighteen Met Office stations. Spring on the left, autumn on the right.
| Station | Region | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Sep | Oct | Nov |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Durham102 m | North East England | 6.4 | 3.3 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 0.7 | 4.3 |
| Sheffield131 m | Yorkshire | 3.6 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 2.3 |
| Bradford134 m | Yorkshire | 4.9 | 2.5 | 0.3 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 | 4.0 |
| Whitby60 m | Yorkshire | 4.1 | 2.0 | 0.4 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 2.0 |
| Sutton Bonington48 m | the East Midlands | 5.9 | 3.4 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 0.7 | 4.3 |
| Waddington68 m | the East Midlands | 4.4 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 2.5 |
| Camborne87 m | South West England | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 |
| Chivenor6 m | South West England | 2.7 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 1.6 |
| Yeovilton20 m | South West England | 7.6 | 4.1 | 0.6 | 0 | 0 | 1.3 | 5.6 |
| Heathrow25 m | South East England | 2.8 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 2.5 |
| Oxford63 m | South East England | 3.9 | 1.7 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 | 0.6 | 3.3 |
| Eastbourne7 m | South East England | 1.2 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 |
| Cardiff (Bute Park)9 m | Wales | 3.8 | 1.4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.7 | 3.8 |
| Valley (Anglesey)10 m | Wales | 2.7 | 0.6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 0.7 |
| Aberporth133 m | Wales | 1.8 | 0.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.5 |
| Leuchars10 m | Scotland | 7.8 | 3.7 | 0.8 | 0 | 0 | 1.1 | 6.2 |
| Eskdalemuir242 m | Scotland | 11.9 | 8.1 | 3.6 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 3.7 | 8.8 |
| Braemar339 m | Scotland | 15.1 | 11.1 | 4.9 | 0.7 | 1.3 | 4.8 | 11.0 |
Frost by region
- North East EnglandDurham averages frosts into May and from October. A long frost season for England.
- YorkshireThree stations, three stories: city, higher ground and coast.
- the East MidlandsSutton Bonington averages frosts into May; Lincolnshire’s Waddington is milder in spring.
- South West EnglandThe mildest station and one of the frostiest lowland ones are both in the South West.
- South East EnglandLondon is mild, Oxford less so, and the Sussex coast milder still.
- WalesThe coast is mild; Cardiff’s park station is frostier than you might expect.
- ScotlandFrom the Fife coast to the Cairngorms: frosts into May at every station, and at Braemar some in every month.
What a frost date does and doesn't tell you
A typical date is a 50:50 date
The typical last frost is the middle of 30 years: in about half of years there is one after it. The look-up also gives how late one runs in 1 year in 10, which is the date that matters for tender plants.Air frost and ground frost differ
Air frost is measured about 1.25 m above the ground. The ground can cool faster than the air, so a ground frost can happen without an air frost (RMetS).Your garden isn’t the station
Hollows, hills and open ground are colder; towns, walls and the coast are milder. Treat any figure as a starting point.Tender crops need warmth too
Tomatoes, for example, want temperatures reliably above 16°C, not only no frost. See when to plant tomatoes.
How this works
The postcode look-up uses only the outward code (the first half) and nothing is stored. Its answer comes from Vercro's own frost climatology, built from the Met Office's HadUK-Grid: daily minimum air temperatures on a 1 km grid across the UK, for the 30 years 1996 to 2025. For each year, Vercro finds the last air frost of spring and the first of autumn in every grid square where people live in that postcode district, an air frost being a minimum below 0 °C. It keeps all 30 years rather than an average, so it can say both what is usual and how often a frost comes later. The Vercro app uses exactly the same data and code for a garden.
Tender crops are timed from that history, not from the usual date. The RHS says the last air frost typically comes two to four weeks before it is safe to plant tender crops out. Vercro waits until a late frost here is unlikely (no more than 1 year in 10, plus a margin for ground frost), and at least two to four weeks after the usual last frost, then checks the forecast for nights above 7 °C.
The station tables are thirty-year averages (1996 to 2025) of the Met Office's published monthly air frost counts, fetched on 19/09/2026. A month with missing data is left out of that station's average.
Two measures, one source
Both come from the Met Office. The postcode dates are from its 1 km grid, which is interpolated between stations and smooths out frost hollows; the station counts are thermometer readings at one site. They answer different questions and won't match exactly.
Contains Met Office data © Crown copyright (HadUK-Grid, via the Centre for Environmental Data Analysis), and OS data © Crown copyright and database right, Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right, and National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right (Code-Point Open). All used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Keep going
Where this comes from
Crop windows, growing times and plant families come from Vercro's own curated crop catalogue, the same data the Vercro app uses. Where a published source says something different, we show both rather than choosing the convenient one. Reviewed 19 September 2026.
- Historic station data (monthly air frost days, 1996 to 2025), Met Office, Open Government Licence v3.0. Read 19 September 2026.
- A touch of frost: types of frost, Royal Meteorological Society. Read 19 September 2026.
- Tomatoes: grow your own, Royal Horticultural Society. Read 19 September 2026.
Vercro uses your frost dates every day
Add your garden's postcode and Vercro uses its frost dates and forecast to shape the jobs it shows on Today, and to say whether a sowing will finish in time.