[9] Due to an unusually powerful North Pacific jet stream, the extratropical cyclone underwent extremely explosive cyclogenesis on November 7, owing to the energy from differences in air masses.

[5][6] After attaining typhoon-force winds at 70 knots (130 km/h; 80 mph), the new storm's central pressure decreased to 920 hPa (mbar; 27.17 inHg) early on November 8, becoming the most intense extratropical cyclone of the North Pacific Ocean since reliable records began.

[1] The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provided a slightly higher estimate of 924 mbar (hPa; 27.29 inHg), a pressure which still holds the record for most intense cyclone in the Bering Sea.

However, the system's intensity shifted the jet stream far to the north of Alaska, resulting in a large mass of Arctic air invading the United States along and east of the Rocky Mountains, which caused the worst cold wave the United States had experienced since the Early 2014 North American cold wave.

[19] The northward movement of the cyclone altered the jet stream, which allowed a fragment of the polar vortex to descend from the Arctic region into lower Canada and the Eastern United States, affecting up to 200 million people with colder-than-normal temperatures and early snowstorms.