DENVER — A winter storm moving across Colorado Thursday is not expected to be too impactful overall, but it is the type of storm that can create snow squalls.
A snow squall is just like a blizzard. It can cause blinding snow to blow sideways in strong winds creating low visibility and dangerous driving conditions. Except snow squalls develop suddenly, cover a small area and usually only last for 20 to 40 minutes.
There’s only about a 25% chance of one developing, but one or more could pop up in an area that includes the Front Range mountains, foothills and urban corridor.
The most likely timing would be from about 1 a.m. to noon Thursday.
Squalls can pop up in a similar way that thunderstorms pop up in the spring and summer months. If one forms, the National Weather Service issues a snow squall warning for that small area minutes before impact just like a severe thunderstorm warning.
A significant snow squall warning will even post an alert to the Wireless Emergency Alert system which automatically triggers a notification to your cell phone.
It’s considered significant when the squall will impact a major roadway during a busy time of the day.
This is the fifth winter that snow squall warnings have been issued in Colorado and out of the 149 total warnings issued, 54 have come during February. It's the second most active month for snow squalls behind December which has seen 61 warnings.
There have been 12 snow squall warnings issued this winter, most of which have been in southeast Colorado. None have yet to be issued in the Denver area.
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