Frost dates
Frost in South West England
What the stations recorded, 1996 to 2025
- Camborne (87 m): 0 air frost days on average in April and 0 in May; 0 in October and 0.2 in November. March is the last spring month averaging half a frosty day or more, and December the first autumn one. About 7 frosty days a year.
- Chivenor (6 m): 1.0 air frost days on average in April and 0 in May; 0.3 in October and 1.6 in November. April is the last spring month averaging half a frosty day or more, and November the first autumn one. About 20 frosty days a year.
- Yeovilton (20 m): 4.1 air frost days on average in April and 0.6 in May; 1.3 in October and 5.6 in November. May is the last spring month averaging half a frosty day or more, and October the first autumn one. About 48 frosty days a year.
The South West has a reputation for mild winters, and the Cornish coast earns it. Inland Somerset does not: Yeovilton is one of the frostiest lowland stations in England.
Your own garden
A station is one spot. Add your postcode for your area's average last and first frost.
Month by month
| Station | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camborne | 2.5 | 1.8 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 1.8 |
| Chivenor | 5.7 | 4.4 | 2.7 | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 1.6 | 4.3 |
| Yeovilton | 10.4 | 9.1 | 7.6 | 4.1 | 0.6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.3 | 5.6 | 9.7 |
What this means for sowing and planting
Camborne, on the Cornish coast, averaged no April or May air frosts over thirty years and only a handful of frosty days a year. Chivenor, on the north Devon coast, sits in between. Yeovilton, low-lying inland Somerset at 20 m, averages several April frosts, still gets them in May, and has more frosty days a year than Durham.
So an inland Somerset garden may need to plan like the Midlands for tender crops, while a coastal Cornish garden can often plant out weeks earlier and is the kind of mild site the RHS has in mind for autumn-sown broad beans.
Local things that change it
Low ground, cold nights
Yeovilton is low-lying and inland. Low ground away from the sea can collect cold air on still, clear nights.The coast is the mild part
Coastal Cornwall and Devon are the parts that match the reputation.Dartmoor and Exmoor
Upland gardens are colder than any of these stations.Bristol
We have no Bristol station in this dataset. Use the postcode look-up for your own area.
What we can and can't tell you
Stations, not your garden
These are thermometer readings at a handful of Met Office sites, averaged over thirty years. They show how the region behaves, not what your garden will do this spring. A frosty day count isn't a last-frost date, and a ground frost can come on a night the station records none. For your area's typical last frost and how late one can come, use the postcode look-up above.
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.
Vercro reads your garden's own frost dates
Add your garden's postcode and Vercro uses its frost dates to say whether a sowing will finish in time, and its forecast to shape the jobs it shows on Today.