These locations are embedded within a large swath of extreme cold that stretched from around the southern Barents Sea, east of Scandinavia, to the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan.Zhilinda had not seen temperatures rise above minus-58 degrees (minus-50 Celsius) for six days as of Wednesday.Olenek — southeast of Zhilinda — was among the locations where temperatures tumbled to exceptionally low levels.Judah Cohen, a meteorologist and long-range forecast expert, recently suggested on Twitter that it takes about two weeks for cold air over Siberia to reach the Lower 48 states.Key to this change would be the development of high pressure over western North America, which would both block storms from hitting California and potentially create a pathway for the exceptional cold in Siberia to cross into the Western Hemisphere."