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Public Information Statement
National Weather Service New York NY
619 PM EDT Wed Sep 28 2022

...NWS offices serving New England and New York will conduct an
experiment this fall to improve services related to the Frost-
Freeze Program...

The Frost-Freeze program of the National Weather Service is
designed to alert local growers and gardeners of the potential of
a damaging frost or freeze for a given area during the
climatologically defined growing season. This allows people to
take preventative measures for plants and crops against potential
damaging temperatures.

The growing season is defined as the period between the median
date of the last Spring Freeze and the median date of the first
Fall Freeze. When a Frost or Freeze is expected during the growing
season, the NWS will issue a Frost Advisory or Freeze Warning
respectively. Actions in the Fall can help possibly prolong the
growing season for late stage vegetation.

Currently, the ending of the issuance of Frost/Freeze headlines
for a season is based on the occurrence of a freeze in one
weather forecast zone or two weeks after the median first Fall
freeze date. This approach was confusing to many users as
meteorological conditions often led to a patchwork approach of
ending the NWS frost/freeze program across multiple weather
forecast zones and NWS offices.

The NWS forecast offices serving New England and New York
(Burlington VT, Gray ME, Caribou ME, Boston/Norton MA, Albany NY,
Buffalo NY, Binghamton, NY, and New York, NY) will conduct an
experimental program service during this fall season 2022. The
purpose of this experimental program is to streamline the
Frost/Freeze program for simplified customer usability.

This experiment means that Frost/Freeze headlines will be issued
up to 10 days beyond the median date of the first freeze. This
corresponds to the 75th to 90th percentile of the first freeze
date, established by using 30 year temperature averages.

The following are the climatologically defined areas and their
respective 75th to 90th percentile of a first fall freeze, for
which Frost/Freeze headlines will no longer be issued.

October 31st:
Interior Southern Connecticut, Lower Hudson Valley, Interior NE
New Jersey.

November 11th:
Suffolk, Northern Nassau, and Southern Westchester Counties,
Coastal Connecticut, and Eastern Bergen, Essex, and Union counties

November 21st:
New York City, Southern Nassau County and Hudson County

A detailed handout with Median Last Spring and First fall freeze
climatology can be found at:
https://www.weather.gov/media/okx/FrostFreeze/OKX_Frost_Freeze_22_handout.pdf

If you have any questions or comments on this experiment, please
reach out to Nelson Vaz, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at
[email protected]

$$

NWS OKX Office Area Precipitation Totals