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Abstract Previous studies have suggested possible connections between the decreasing Arctic sea‐ice and long‐duration (>5 days, LD) cold weather events in Eurasia and North America. Here we document the occurrences of weather regimes in winter by their durations, based on the empirical orthogonal function analyses of the daily geopotential height fields at 500 hPa (z500) for the months of November–March 1979–2019. Significant changes in the occurrence frequency and persistence of Ural ridge (UR) and weak stratospheric polar vortex (PV) were found between winters following high and low autumn sea‐ice covers (SIC) in the Barents and Kara seas. It is shown that a strengthening of the UR is accompanied with a weakening of the PV, and a weak PV favors Greenland ridge (GR). Cold spells in East Asia persist for 5 more days after an LDUR. Cold spells from Canada to the U.S. occur 2–5 days after an LD Ural trough (UT) and are associated with a z500 anomaly dipole centered over Alaska (+) and Hudson Bay (−). Cold spells in the eastern U.S. occur 1–4 days after an LDGR due to circulations resembling the Pacific‐North America pattern. Increased occurrences of UR in winter are associated with a decreased eastward propagation of synoptic waves from the North Atlantic to Japan and the North Pacific.