Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper

Scrape last spring frost date, first fall frost date, and growing-season length for any US ZIP code from The Old Farmer's Almanac. Covers ~41,500 US ZIP codes using NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — the same data garden apps, planting calendars, and ag-scheduling tools pull from.

Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper Features

Extracts frost dates and growing-season length for any US ZIP code in one run
Returns last spring frost date, first fall frost date, and frost-free days between them
Includes the NOAA climate station name and elevation for every record
Handles warm-climate ZIP codes (e.g., Southern California) gracefully — returns null for frost dates rather than erroring out
Covers the full ~41,500-ZIP US universe via a bundled dataset derived from GeoNames postal data
Runs in two modes: supply your own ZIP list or scrape the whole country
Runs in seconds and costs almost nothing

Who Uses Frost Date Data?

Garden app developers — build planting calendars and frost-alert features without maintaining NOAA station lookups yourself
Seed companies and nurseries — calculate last-frost-safe shipping windows by customer ZIP code
Agricultural software teams — integrate frost-free season length into crop modeling and field scheduling pipelines
Research and academia — compile regional frost exposure datasets for phenology or climate impact studies
Weather and climate journalists — cross-reference growing season lengths with temperature anomaly data, because the table does the work you don't want to do manually

How Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper Works

You supply a list of ZIP codes — or leave it empty to scrape all ~41,500 US ZIP codes using the bundled list
The scraper fetches each frost-date calculator page (almanac.com/gardening/frostdates/zipcode/{zip}) using a realistic browser fingerprint
It returns the NOAA station name, frost dates and growing-season length
Each ZIP yields one clean record. Invalid ZIP codes (no matching NOAA station) are skipped silently

Input

{
  "zipcodes": ["10001", "60601", "98101"],
  "maxItems": 100
}

Field	Type	Default	Description
`zipcodes`	array	`["10001", "90210", "60601"]`	List of US ZIP codes to scrape. Leave empty to scrape all ~41,500 US ZIP codes
`maxItems`	integer	`10`	Maximum number of records to return. Useful for testing. Set to 0 or omit for unlimited

Full-country run example:

{
  "zipcodes": [],
  "maxItems": 0
}

Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper Output Fields

{
  "zipcode": "10001",
  "city": "New York",
  "state": "NY",
  "weather_station": "NEW YORK CNTRL PK TWR",
  "station_elevation_ft": 131,
  "last_spring_frost": "Apr 3",
  "first_fall_frost": "Nov 14",
  "growing_season_days": 224,
  "source": "Old Farmer's Almanac frost-date calculator",
  "url": "https://www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates/zipcode/10001"
}

Field	Type	Description
`zipcode`	string	US ZIP code
`city`	string	City name for this ZIP code
`state`	string	Two-letter US state abbreviation
`weather_station`	string	NOAA climate station name used for this ZIP's frost date calculation
`station_elevation_ft`	integer	Elevation of the nearest NOAA climate station in feet
`last_spring_frost`	string	Average last spring frost date at 30% probability (e.g., `"Apr 3"`). `null` if no frost risk
`first_fall_frost`	string	Average first fall frost date at 30% probability (e.g., `"Nov 14"`). `null` if no frost or infrequent
`growing_season_days`	integer	Number of frost-free days between last spring and first fall frost. `null` for frost-free climates
`source`	string	Always `"Old Farmer's Almanac frost-date calculator"`
`url`	string	Source URL for this record

Frost dates use a 30% probability threshold from NOAA 1991–2020 climate normals — meaning there's roughly a 3-in-10 chance of frost occurring before or after the given date.

🔍 FAQ

How do I scrape frost dates for the whole US?

Leave zipcodes empty and set maxItems to 0. The Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper has a bundled list of ~41,500 US ZIP codes from the GeoNames postal dataset. It processes all of them in a single run.

What does a null frost date mean?

It means the Almanac's NOAA station data shows no meaningful frost risk for that ZIP — typical for warm-climate areas like coastal Southern California or Hawaii. The record is still returned with the station name and elevation.

How much does a full US scrape cost?

At standard PPE pricing (~$0.001/record), scraping all ~41,500 ZIP codes costs roughly $0.04–0.05 total. It's about as cheap as scraping gets for a bounded finite dataset.

What probability threshold do the frost dates use?

Thirty percent. That's the Almanac's standard — there's a 30% chance of frost on or before the last spring date and on or after the first fall date. Some gardeners want the more conservative 10% or 50% thresholds; those aren't exposed by the Almanac's ZIP-code calculator.

Need More Features?

Need different probability tiers, Canadian postal codes, or bulk-refresh scheduling? File an issue or reach out.

Why Use Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper?

Zero competition — Apify's store has no other scraper that resolves ZIP → last/first frost + growing-season days as a clean table
Ready-to-use output — structured JSON with consistent field names, no NOAA station lookup tables to manage yourself
Bounded and predictable — ~41,500 records, finite cost, one run to capture the full US dataset

Old Farmer's Almanac — Frost Dates & Growing Season by ZIP