In the midst of familiar winter storm warnings, two snow squall warnings were issued to Northern Utah residents in as many days. But what is a snow squall?

According to the National Weather Service, a snow squall is an intense but short-lived burst of heavy snowfall, often accompanied by heavy winds. Snow squalls severely inhibit road visibility, creating highly dangerous, near whiteout conditions. The slick roads caused by snow squalls can cause high-speed accidents and large pileups, resulting in injuries and even fatalities.

“So the idea is that essentially you have high visibility, clear roads, rapidly changing over to snow accumulating on the roadways, gusty winds and visibility to a quarter-mile or less,” said Michael Wessler, an NWS meteorologist. “The key difference between a snow squall and a blizzard is generally the duration. Snow squalls are really short-lived and blizzards are generally multi-hour to potentially even multi-day events. And a blizzard does not need to have snow falling, it can just be blowing snow.”

Snow squalls can be hard to predict days in advance, but well-defined cold fronts give meteorologists the first indication that one may be on the way.

“Snow squalls are more of a short-fuse, near-term type event,” Wessler said.

According to Wessler, snow squalls aren’t entirely uncommon in Utah; however, the warnings are.

“They’re generally reserved for very specific scenarios. For example, if you had a snow squall that came through in the middle of the night, it wasn’t impacting a heavy commute time, we would not issue a snow squall warning,” Wessler said. “But because (Monday’s) was during peak commute time, we saw very rapid drops in visibility and very rapidly accumulating snow, all of those factors together warranted the warning.”

Snow squall warnings let those in the affected area know it would be best to stay indoors and give those already on the road the opportunity to pull off the road if need be.

“The warning gives you a chance to find a safe place to get off the highway and then kind of assess if you need to delay the rest of your travel or wait it out,” Wessler said. “The big thing is if you’re interacting with a snow squall or driving into a snow squall, you want to reduce your speed, turn on your headlights and don’t slam on your brakes.”

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