Snowpocalypse 2015 is a term used to describe the crippling blizzard in the U.S. Northeast and bitter cold snaps in New York and Washington on January 27, 2015. In what the National Weather Service described as a historic blizzard, the Snowpocalypse 2015 dumped nearly 3 feet of snow in parts of Boston, Hartford and Providence, and triggering high tides that breached a seawall and forced residents to flee their coastal homes. Fresh snow fell in places where inches of snow were already on the ground from previous storms. Heavy and blowing snow with blizzard conditions lasted for over 15 hours with snow accumulation at a rate of 2 to 3 inches an hour. The blizzard also generated wind gusts up to 55 miles per hour with temperatures in the low 20s. Snowpocalypse 2015 caused widespread of power outages in Massachusetts. It also led to the closure of major airports in the region.

In March, 2015, physicists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pointed to a possible culprit for the record snow fall and cold temperatures in the U.S Northeast: air pollution in China and India. According to NASA, large swaths of emissions from burning coal in China and Southeast Asia generate pollution particles that blow east and mix with storms above the Pacific Ocean. These particles serve as cloud nuclei and foster cloud formation as the particles give water vapor something on which to condense.