Cold stretch could come close to record length in La Crosse

At some point today on Thursday or Friday, the temperature in La Crosse is expected to rise above zero for the first time since Monday. 

That means this week could rank among the five longest periods of sub-zero weather in the city’s history. 

There are four times on record so far when temps remained below zero in La Crosse for at least 98 straight hours. 

Two of those periods happened around Christmas of 1983, and were separated by one day of temperatures above zero. 

But the record was set this week in 1996…when La Crosse went six days and 23 hours below zero. 

It started at 5 p.m. on January 29th of 1996, and lingered until 4 p.m. on February 4th. 

And the temp dropped below minus-30 on three of those days.