The patchy frost that was expected to settle in some areas Saturday morning may have startled a few folks, and for good reason: the average first freeze in Wichita doesn’t typically arrive for another three weeks.
Records show the average first freeze date in Wichita is Oct. 28. This being Kansas, however, there’s a significant swing in freeze dates on the calendar. The earliest recorded freeze in Wichita was Sept. 22, 1995.
The latest recorded freeze was Nov. 21, 1944 – just a few days before Thanksgiving, as a matter of fact.
But forecasters tell me fall-like temperatures had arrived in Wichita by late August, a few weeks ahead of schedule…so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Jack Frost would arrive early this year as well.
One Comment
But…I still have green tomatoes!
And I remember picking tomatoes on Dec. 5th, 1999, in advance of a few inches of snow, so if there was a freeze before then, it didn’t hit my garden.