Methane/Air premixed flames are studied numerically, using a detailed chemical model, to investigate the flame strech effects on the extinction in a counterflow. The finite difference method, time integration and modified Newton iteration are used, and adaptive grid technique and grid smoothing have been employed to adjust the grid system according to the spatial steepness of the solution profiles. Results show that the flame stretch, or the conventional nondimensionalized stretch having the tangential flow characteristics of the stretched flame alone cannot adequately describes the extinction phenomena. On the other hand, the local flame stretch having both the normal and tangential flow characteristics of the stretched flame can give a proper explanation to the extinction of the symmetric planar premixed flames stabilized in a counter flow. The extinction condition were found to be a constant local stretch regardless of the equivalence ratio.