Updated: 2026-07-31
The nearest official measuring point to Birmingham is the Met Office station at Coton-in-the-Elms (Derbyshire), sitting at 85 m above sea level and about 32.6 km away. Built-up Birmingham has its own urban microclimate — warmer at night in the city centre, with frost pockets in outlying valleys — so treat these as the closest reliable record, not an exact reading for your garden. The station's data runs from 1991-03-01 through 2025-12-31.
If you garden around Birmingham and need one date to remember: the latest spring frost ever recorded at the nearest station came on 2 June 1991, when the temperature dipped to -0.2°C (minimum temperature, °C). That was a truly exceptional outlier — no other year in the record has pushed a frost past early June.
In the 35 spring seasons covered here (1991–2025, considering frosts from January through June), the last frost of winter has arrived on 2 June 1991 at the very latest, and as early as 22 March 2007 at the earliest. That 2007 season ended its frost risk remarkably soon — more than two months before the 1991 record, and on a minimum of -0.3°C. The contrast shows how much swing is possible between one year and the next.
Here is the complete year-by-year series, sorted from oldest to most recent. The "last frost" column is the latest date in that year's January–June period with a minimum temperature below 0°C, and the tmin column is the minimum recorded on that exact day.
The chart shows the complete annual series. The table lists the most notable years; the full series comes from Met Office.
| Year | Last frost date | Min temp that day (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 1991 | 1991-06-02 | -0.2 |
| 1997 | 1997-05-07 | -0.1 |
| 2001 | 2001-05-04 | -0.2 |
| 2007 | 2007-03-22 | -0.3 |
| 2009 | 2009-04-05 | -0.1 |
| 2018 | 2018-04-01 | -0.1 |
| 2019 | 2019-04-14 | -3.5 |
The table below shows the average number of frost days per month (minimum below 0°C) over the full 1991–2025 period. Winter is clearly the frost season: January averages 10.0 frost days, December 9.3, February 8.5. By June, the average drops to 0.0 days — a statistical way of saying June frosts are essentially unheard of, which makes the 2 June 1991 event even more remarkable.
| Month | Average frost days |
|---|---|
| 01 (January) | 10.0 |
| 02 (February) | 8.5 |
| 03 (March) | 6.0 |
| 04 (April) | 3.7 |
| 05 (May) | 0.7 |
| 06 (June) | 0.0 |
| 10 (October) | 1.1 |
| 11 (November) | 4.6 |
| 12 (December) | 9.3 |
For perspective on what frost can mean here, the absolute minimum temperature ever recorded at Coton-in-the-Elms in the 1991–2025 period was -11.5°C on 3 December 2010. That cold snap came very early in winter, not in the spring frost season, but it shows the station's capacity for severe cold when conditions align.
If you look at the year-by-year series, you'll notice that spring frosts cluster in two bands: April is by far the most common month for the final frost of the season, with several years ending frost risk on 16 April specifically (1998, 2000, 2002, 2008, 2012). May finishes appear less frequently but are far from rare — 1995, 1996, 2005, 2020 and 2025 all pushed into mid-May. The takeaway for planting tender annuals: the 2 June 1991 outlier is a reminder that frost can strike unusually late, but based on the last 35 seasons, the overwhelming majority of final frosts arrive before 20 April or in early May.
One caution when applying this to your own plot: Coton-in-the-Elms sits at 85 m elevation, roughly 32.6 km from Birmingham. Urban heat from the city can keep central Birmingham a degree or two milder on clear nights, while low-lying gardens in the outer suburbs can be colder. The record is the best available reference, not a precise forecast for any single postcode.
Source: Met Office MIDAS data, Coton-in-the-Elms station. Period: 1991-2025.
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