More than 160,000 people were given only minutes to act on Wednesday morning after National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists issued a “life-threatening” snow squall warning in southwestern Utah.
The snow squall warning alerted people to heavy snow and strong winds that could cause visibility to plummet rapidly. Snow squalls can cause deadly traffic accidents for these reasons. The warning comes as the western U.S. is walloped by a series of back-to-back winter storms set to dump as much as 8 feet on the highest elevations this week.
Shortly after 9:40 a.m. local time on Wednesday, meteorologists at the NWS Salt Lake City office issued the snow squall warnings. Follow-up warnings were issued further east at around 10 a.m. local time…