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.

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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
• Pure HTML scraping — no browser required, no proxies needed

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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

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How Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper Works

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

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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
}

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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.

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🔍 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.

Does this scraper require proxies?

Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Dates Scraper uses impit TLS fingerprinting to mimic a real browser. No proxy configuration needed — the Almanac serves the frost calculator pages to realistic browser requests without additional authentication.

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.

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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