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Public Information Statement
National Weather Service Burlington VT
926 AM EDT Mon Sep 9 2024

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

The National Weather Service`s (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 are 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 growing season 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, New York NY) will continue the
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 means that Frost/Freeze headlines will be issued
for any threat of a frost/freeze during the growing season up to
the 75-90th percentile of the median first Fall Freeze,
established by using 30 year temperature averages, basically up
to 10 days after the median first fall freeze.

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

October 1st: Northeast Vermont and the Adirondacks of NY.

October 11th: St. Lawrence River Valley in NY and the remainder
of VT, except the Champlain Valley.

October 21th: Champlain Valley of VT/NY.

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/btv/BTVFrost_Freeze.pdf

If you have any questions or comments on this experiment, please
reach out to Scott Whittier, Warning Coordination Meteorologist
at scott.whittier@noaa.gov or call 802-862-8711.

$$