First Autumn Frost of 2023

It finally happened: October 22nd is Blatchford's first official frost of fall 2023. 

That comes 6 months after the final frost of spring, back on April 22nd.

October 22 is Blatchford's 2nd latest first-frost-of-autumn on record. It just misses 2022's record of October 23rd. 1975 is 3rd, with October 21st.

2023 had a fairly early final-spring-frost on April 22nd, and a very late first-fall-frost on October 22nd. 

Altogether there were 182 frost-free days in-a-row, which is the 2nd most on record, behind 184 in 1985. 182 days is essentially half of the year.

2023 snuck through on a bit of a technicality though, because we did already drop all of the way down to 0.1°C on October 1st and 5th. 

Last year in 2022 things stayed above 1°C until the first frost, and 1980 & 1975 dipped down to 0.6°C.

While Blatchford's first-fall-frost was very late this year, the rest of the region was closer to average, and got caught by some of the cool nights back in September.

Across the prairies Edmonton almost always records a longer frost-free season than the other big cities. 

But this year Calgary's was 1 week later than their average, and Saskatoon, Regina & Winnipeg were all around 2 weeks late.

October 22nd is an extremely late frost for Edmonton, but in central and eastern Canada it's just average. St. John's had its first frost on October 18th, but the rest of the cities are still waiting.

This is another way of looking at how freezing Lows start to creep in during September & October. 

2022 had 5 by the end of October, and the average is around 17. 2018 had a ridiculously cold September, and had 29 freezing Lows up to Halloween.