page_title: November 2014 North American cold wave
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: November 2014 North American cold wave / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: The November 2014 Bering Sea bomb cyclone at peak intensity over the Bering Sea, late on November 8, 2014.
context_page_description: The November 2014 North American cold wave was an extreme weather event that occurred across most of Canada and the contiguous United States, including parts of the Western United States up to western California. One of the first events of the winter, the cold wave was caused by the northward movement of an extremely powerful bomb cyclone associated with Typhoon Nuri's remnant, which shifted the jet stream far northward, creating an omega block pattern. This allowed a piece of the polar vortex to advance southward into the Central and Eastern United States, bringing record-cold temperatures to much of the region. In contrast, Alaska experienced above-average temperatures.
  This was the worst cold wave that the North American region had experienced since an earlier cold wave in early 2014. The cold wave was expected to last for a few weeks, extending at least until American Thanksgiving. Although the Omega Block broke down on November 20, due to a powerful storm moving into the Gulf of Alaska, frigid conditions continued to persist across much of the United States.
context_section_description: On November 8, the northward movement of a bomb cyclone associated with Typhoon Nuri's remnants shifted the jet stream far to the north, creating an omega block pattern,  which allowed a fragment of the polar vortex to descend from Arctic region into lower Canada and the Eastern United States, affecting up to 200 million people with colder-than-normal temperatures and early snowstorms. Although the Omega block broke down on November 20, a powerful storm brought more frigid temperatures. The wave ended on December 6 when an area of high pressure moved in.
  Some meteorologists also predicted that the winter of 2014–15 would be abnormally cold across the Eastern United States (though on October 16 the NOAA predicted warmer than average Winter temperatures in the Northeast), due to early snowfall in Siberia, and a weak but developing El Niño, which are both factors in erratic jet stream behavior that could lead to an abnormally cold winter.
caption: The 2014 Bering Sea bomb cyclone at peak intensity on November 8, over the Bering Sea. This system triggered the cold wave across North America.
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