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Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Buffalo NY
929 AM EDT Mon Sep 9 2024

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

The National Weather Services (NWS) Frost/Freeze Program consists of issuing Frost Advisories, Freeze Warnings, or Hard Freeze Warnings when cold temperatures potentially threaten tender vegetation and crops during the climatological growing season. The growing season is defined by the period of time between the median date of the last spring freeze and the median date of the first fall freeze.

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 York and New England (Burlington VT, Gray ME, Caribou ME, Boston MA, Albany NY, Buffalo NY, Binghamton NY, and New York NY) will continued an experimental program service during the fall of 2024. The purpose of this experimental program is to streamline the frost/freeze program for simplified customer usability.

This experiment simplifies the season during which Frost/Freeze headlines will be issued to include the entirety of the climatologically defined growing season as well as the succeeding 10 days. The end of the frost/freeze program will not be brought about during this experiment by a freeze actually occurring to better account for users protective measures being effective at preventing vegetation damage from an early frost or freeze.

The following are the climatologically defined median dates of a first fall freeze and the end date of the frost/freeze program for the fall season for all counties in the NWS Buffalo service area:

Median Date      Frost/Freeze           Forecast Zone
                 Program End Date

October 1        October 11             Cattaraugus
                                        Allegany
                                        Jefferson
                                        Lewis
October 11  October 21             Chautauqua
                                        Southern Erie
                                        Wyoming
                                        Livingston
                                        Ontario
                                        Oswego
October 21       October 31             Niagara
                                        Northern Erie
                                        Orleans
                                        Genesee
                                        Monroe
                                        Wayne
                                        Northern Cayuga

Again, our goal is to streamline the frost/freeze process, by using defined closing dates, which should make it easier and aid in planning decisions for our users.

A detailed handout with Median Last Spring and First Fall Freeze climatology can be found at: https://www.weather.gov/media/buf/frostfreeze.pdf

If you have any questions or comments on this experiment, please reach out to Michael Fries, Meteorologist in Charge, at michael.j.fries@noaa.gov or call 716-565-3378.



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