Why snow squall warnings are blowing up your phone -- and why they are necessary
In a matter of minutes, snow squalls can turn a pleasant Wednesday into a winter wonderland. While the results can be beautiful, the minutes in between can be blinding and dreadful, particularly for those in vehicles.
Thankfully, phone alerts are able to give warnings to residents that a squall is on the way and potentially prevent an unaware driver from venturing into danger.
The alerts and impending squalls captured millions of people's attention on Wednesday morning, as "snow squall" was a top search trend on Google and #SnowSquall was a top 10 trend on Twitter in the morning.
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AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski described snow squalls to be the wintertime equivalent of a summer thunderstorm, with the potential to strike at any time.
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"They are often small in size, but they can bring intense snowfall, just as thunderstorms bring intense rainfall to a small area," Sosnowski said. "These wintertime showers form when the air near the ground is much warmer than the air aloft. First, towering clouds develop. Next, that moisture is released in the form of snow."
Due to the fast-hitting nature of squalls, special weather event warnings that pop up on people's phones are crucially important. As residents in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast have experienced this week, squalls can spread hundreds of miles and cause sudden whiteouts, reducing visibility to just one-quarter of a mile at times.
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Phones across the eastern portion of the U.S. buzzed with alerts on Wednesday, Jan. 8, with warnings of an impending snow squall. |
The phone alerts give advance warning of not only visibility concerns to come but also slippery road conditions. The fast-falling squalls and frigid temperatures, combined with cold air and whipping wind, can combine to trigger catastrophes on major roadways.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, the Wireless Emergency Alerts system was launched in 2012 and is used to send warnings to the public for critical situations, such as dangerous weather warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS). In November 2018, the NWS started sending out its first Snow Squall Warnings.
"Snow squalls are unique, extremely localized extreme weather events that can result in high impact to the public and commerce," the NWS said in the alert's initial service description document. "Annual highway fatalities from these events can exceed fatalities due to tornadoes in many years ... The Polygon-based Snow Squall Warning will provide critical, life-saving information for these short-term, highly localized, extremely hazardous events to our partners in a manner that will allow them to recognize and parse the products to make them available to their customers."
In the first half of this week, numerous major accidents and pileups were instigated by quick-hitting weather disruptions, as snowfall quickly accumulated on major roadways. By the weekend, another scary string of accidents may dot the eastern portion of the country if drivers ignore those phone warnings.
Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.
