Albany’s First Freeze Has Been Arriving Later: What 150 Years of NWS Data Show

Ask a few longtime Albany residents when the first freeze of the fall usually arrives, and the answers will not match. The date has moved over the decades, and the weather record shows how much.

The National Weather Service in Albany keeps a table of the last spring freeze and the first fall freeze for every year since 1874. The pattern is more interesting than the usual “winters are changing” line, and it explains why a late freeze should not make anyone relax about the calendar.

Source: National Weather Service Albany, Growing Seasons, Albany NY. Decade averages are from the NWS table’s own “Mean” rows.

The record, decade by decade

Here is the average first fall freeze at Albany’s official weather station, by decade, from the NWS table.

Three things stand out. First, the climb from the 1960s to the 2010s is steady: the first freeze got later in almost every decade. Second, the 2010s average is the latest of any decade since the 1920s, which averaged Oct. 24. Third, this is not a one-way street. The same table shows the 1950s and 1960s as the earliest stretches on record (averages of Sept. 27 and Sept. 28), and it holds the single earliest first freeze of all, Sept. 14, 1963.

The last ten seasons were all over the map

Averages hide the part that matters to anyone with a driveway to plan. The last ten years of the table, 2016 through 2025, average out to about Oct. 19. But the spread is six weeks:

• Earliest: Sept. 21, 2020.
• Latest: Nov. 3, 2019, with Nov. 2, 2021 and Oct. 31, 2023 close behind.
• Most recent: Oct. 10, 2025.

The NWS table has no entry for 2026 yet. So when someone tells you the freeze is “always late now,” the data says it is late on average and unpredictable in any single year. The latest first freeze on record, Nov. 12, 1883, is a reminder that a warm fall is not new either.

Why a later first freeze is not a longer season

The first freeze is a plant-and-garden marker. It is not the date the season ends for pavement. The NWS 1991-2020 normals for Albany show how fast things change once November starts:

Source: NWS Albany, Normals 1991-2020.

November is the month the average overnight low drops below 32°F. December’s average snowfall is more than five times November’s. A first freeze on Nov. 3 does not buy extra weeks of December. It just means the gap between a mild fall and a hard winter can close fast.

That is the real lesson of the table for a property owner. You cannot plan around the freeze date, because the freeze date will not tell you in advance. What you can plan around is the calendar. For us, that calendar ends soon. We are closing out the 2026 season, and it has been a good year.

What to do if you are on the fence

We serve Albany, Colonie, Schenectady, Saratoga and the rest of the Capital Region. See what we do in Colonie. If you want the longer read on timing, we wrote about why October matters too. We will tell you honestly what your pavement needs, even if the answer is not a full job.

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