It is getting to be the time of the year where the first frost of the season could be soon for the Raccoon River Valley. While parts of northwestern Iowa such as Spencer and Sheldon have experienced their first freeze, locally we have just flirted with a frost thus far. We spoke with Iowa State Climatologist Harry Hillaker and asked when the first frost usually hits central Iowa. “Typically our first freeze does not arrive here in central Iowa and the west central part of the state until roughly about October 5th or 6th, somewhere in that ballpark,” Hillaker explained.
Hillaker did say though that conditions are set for a premature frost this year. “We’ve got such dry air, it kind of enhances the odds of getting a freeze a little bit earlier than usual because dry air just allows things to cool off much more quickly at night.”
Hillaker did have a few words of advice in preparation for the first freeze. “That evening before the frost first comes if you have some garden crops, things like that you wanna try to keep going,” Hillaker advised. “Covering whatever you’re able to cover with sheets or something of that nature would help.” Hillaker also mentioned heavy watering shortly before the arrival of frost as it increases humidity and make it more difficult to get temperatures down to freezing. However he noted that it is much more successful if there are no or mild winds, but in heavy wind there is little you can do.
Hillaker also said that you shouldn’t be too concerned with what to do after the frost hits; he said after a long, warm growing season we will not see much damage from the frost because most of the vegetation has already matured unlike in previous years.