  We examine the effects of turbulent intermittency on the deflagration to
detonation transition (DDT) in Type Ia supernovae. The Zel'dovich mechanism for
DDT requires the formation of a nearly isothermal region of mixed ash and fuel
that is larger than a critical size. We primarily consider the hypothesis by
Khokhlov et al. and Niemeyer and Woosley that the nearly isothermal, mixed
region is produced when the flame makes the transition to the distributed
regime. We use two models for the distribution of the turbulent velocity
fluctuations to estimate the probability as a function of the density in the
exploding white dwarf that a given region of critical size is in the
distributed regime due to strong local turbulent stretching of the flame
structure. We also estimate lower limits on the number of such regions as a
function of density. We find that the distributed regime, and hence perhaps
DDT, occurs in a local region of critical size at a density at least a factor
of 2-3 larger than predicted for mean conditions that neglect intermittency.
This factor brings the transition density to be much larger than the empirical
value from observations in most situations. We also consider the intermittency
effect on the more stringent conditions for DDT by Lisewski et al. and Woosley.
We find that a turbulent velocity of $10^8$ cm/s in a region of size $10^6$ cm,
required by Lisewski et al., is rare. We expect that intermittency gives a
weaker effect on the Woosley model with stronger criterion. The predicted
transition density from this criterion remains below $10^7$ g/cm$^3$ after
accounting for intermittency using our intermittency models.
