Entire trees and even a lone kayaker streamed by. “I imagine they’re going to rent a car and they’re going to go check out some other parts of Montana - somewhere drier,” he said.Īt a cabin in Gardiner, Parker Manning of Terre Haute, Indiana, got an up-close view of the roiling Yellowstone River floodwaters just outside his door. ![]() Taylor spoke as he ferried a family of four adults from Texas, who wanted to do some more sightseeing before heading home. ![]() Mark Taylor, owner and chief pilot of Rocky Mountain Rotors, said his company had airlifted about 40 paying customers over the past two days from Gardiner, including two women who were “very pregnant.” The wave of tourists doesn’t abate until fall, and June is typically one of Yellowstone’s busiest months. More than 4 million visitors were tallied by the park last year. The rains hit just as area hotels filled up in recent weeks with summer tourists. The flooding affected the rest of the park, too, with park officials warning of yet higher flooding and potential problems with water supplies and wastewater systems at developed areas. ![]() Yellowstone’s northern roads may remain impassable for a substantial length of time. The Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs topped a record set in 1918. Heavy rain on top of melting mountain snow pushed the Yellowstone, Stillwater and Clarks Fork rivers to record levels Monday and triggered rock and mudslides, according to the National Weather Service. “Will Yellowstone have a repeat of this in five or even 50 years? Maybe not, but somewhere will have something equivalent or even more extreme,” he said. While the flooding hasn’t been directly attributed to climate change, Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said a warming environment makes extreme weather events more likely than they would have been “without the warming that human activity has caused.” Smoke from a fire in the mountains of Flagstaff, Arizona, could be seen in Colorado. The flooding came as the Midwest and East Coast sizzle from a heat wave and other parts of the West burn from an early wildfire season amid a persistent drought that has increased the frequency and intensity of fires. Residents described a harrowing scene where the water went from a trickle to a torrent over just a few hours. In Red Lodge, a town of 2,100 that’s a popular jumping-off point for a scenic route into the Yellowstone high country, a creek running through town jumped its banks and swamped the main thoroughfare, leaving trout swimming in the street a day later under sunny skies. National Park Service photos of northern Yellowstone showed a mudslide, washed out bridges and roads undercut by churning floodwaters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers. Some of the worst damage happened in the northern part of the park and Yellowstone’s gateway communities in southern Montana. Weather whipsaw: Northcentral Montana should escape flooding seen further south “They’re looking to try to figure out how to hold things together.” “It’s a Yellowstone town, and it lives and dies by tourism, and this is going to be a pretty big hit,” he said. It hit the park as a summer tourist season that draws millions of visitors was ramping up during its 150th anniversary year.īusinesses in hard-hit Gardiner had just started really recovering from the tourism contraction brought by the coronavirus pandemic, and were hoping for a good year, Berg said. Read more: What to know if you're hoping to visit Yellowstone National Park after floods recedeĭays of rain and rapid snowmelt wrought havoc across parts of southern Montana and northern Wyoming, where it washed away cabins, swamped small towns and knocked out power. “A little bit ironic that this spectacular landscape was created by violent geologic and hydrologic events, and it’s just not very handy when it happens while we’re all here settled on it.” “The landscape literally and figuratively has changed dramatically in the last 36 hours,” said Bill Berg, a commissioner in nearby Park County. The historic floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week, tearing out bridges and pouring into nearby homes, pushed a popular fishing river off course - possibly permanently - and may force roadways nearly torn away by torrents of water to be rebuilt in new places. In just days, heavy rain and rapid snowmelt caused a dramatic flood that may forever alter the human footprint on the park’s terrain and the communities that have grown around it. It took decades longer for humans to tame it enough for tourists to visit, often from the comfort of their cars. The forces of fire and ice shaped Yellowstone National Park over thousands of years. Watch Video: Footage shows Yellowstone River floodwaters submerging Montana valley
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |