Four days of incessant rains and melting snows – Monday, June 13 – Thursday, June 16 – turned the Yellowstone Stone River that winds its way through the vast expanse of the park’s rugged wilderness, approximately 2 million acres, into a roaring juggernaut that swept away everything in its path
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK: A raging, monstrous flood has ravaged Yellowstone, which straddles across the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in the US, leading to the evacuation of 10,000 people from inside and the closure of the place for the very first time in its 150-year-old history as a national park, reports in the New York Times, CNN, agencies, say.
Four days of incessant rains and melting snows – Monday, June 13 – Thursday, June 16 – turned the Yellowstone Stone River that winds its way through the vast expanse of the park’s rugged wilderness, approximately 2 million acres, into a roaring juggernaut that has flattened and swept away everything in its paths – buildings, bridges and other structures.
President Joe Biden on Thursday approved a disaster declaration for Montana in areas affected by flooding. “Federal funding is available to State, tribal, eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe storm and flooding in the counties of Carbon, Park, and Stillwater,” the declaration states.
The Governor of Montana Gianforte has declared a statewide disaster and said the Montana National Guard had rescued 12 people stranded by the flood waters in Roscoe and Cooke City.
Yellowstone Park Superintendent has said the park’s southern loop will be reopened sooner, while entrances to the northern half of the park will likely remain closed until late October or early November
All five entrances to Yellowstone will remain closed through at least the weekend, the park authorities said and the northern roads of the park will likely be closed for an extended period due to “severely damaged, impacted infrastructure.”
The battering floodwaters wiped away entire segments of paved road near the northern entrance, downed trees and triggered multiple mudslides.
Fast moving waters tore apart several roads and bridges, submerged cars, and even swept away homes as the underlying foundations became completely worn away.
Communities surrounding Yellowstone are also reeling from the catastrophic damage. Heavy rain was reported throughout the park’s territories in Wyoming and Montana. Meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Billings Cory Mottice said: “We don’t know what this type of flooding is going to do. We’ve not seen this before.”
Those in Paradise Valley, Montana, were issued an evacuation or shelter-in-place order on Monday, June 13 evening. The National Park Service also noted that the park is experiencing an “unprecedented” amount of rainfall and flooding, which has cut power in multiple locations.
The community of Gardiner, Montana, was isolated due to the closings, and officials were working with the state of Montana to “provide necessary support to residents, who are currently without water and power in some areas.”
Pam Morrison, a Montana resident from Emigrant, a town of around 360 persons, almost in Yellowstone’s backyard in a manner of speaking, told Pravasi Samwad: “The floods have been catastrophic, obliterating roads and bridges here leading into Yellowstone National Park.
“This area’s economy is almost totally dependent on tourism and with the mountain road totally gone from the North Entrance and significant damage within the park too, the Northern “loop” of the park may remain closed for a long time to come”, she added.
Elaborating further, Morrison said: “The hotels and restaurants in Gardiner at the north entrance have begun letting all staff go, which means no livelihood for anyone; they will all have to leave and find new jobs and places to live elsewhere”.
“This will trickle down to all of us as our community is also Park dependent. A sad time indeed. A tragedy for all”, Morrison added.
Pravasi Samwad recently carried an exclusive article in its online newspaper, which appeared on Saturday, June 11:
“Pam Morrison – A Woman of courage, fortitude and faith”.
Scientists predict events like this week’s flash flooding would happen more often in the Yellowstone area as global temperatures rise.
A report published last year on the future of Yellowstone concluded the climate crisis would lead to more rainfall and rapid snowmelt due to extreme spring and summer temperatures.
The National Weather Service in Billings says the Beartooth and Absaroka mountain ranges “received anywhere from 0.8 inches to over 5 inches of rainfall” from June 10 to June 13, while CNN calculations say the extreme rainfall combined with snowmelt led to a massive deluge of water, the equivalent of two to three months of summer rain in just three days,
This enormous volume of water then flowed into the rivers and valleys in lower elevations, where it quickly rose to record depths and led to “flooding rarely or never seen before,” according to forecasters at the National Weather Service.
Millions of visitors are drawn each year to the wilderness and active geysers in Yellowstone, which is the oldest national park in the United States and sprawls across more than two million acres in the northwest corner of Wyoming and into Montana and Idaho.
In 2021, more than 4.8 million people visited Yellowstone. The park is particularly popular in the summer, and Mr. Sholly suggested that 10,000 people was a conservative estimate for how many visitors had been in the park when evacuations began.
Yellowstone – some interesting facts
It is the oldest, one of the largest, and probably the best-known national park in the United States. It is situated principally in northwestern Wyoming and partly in southern Montana and eastern Idaho and includes the greatest concentration of hydrothermal features in the world.
There are more than 10,000 hydrothermal features in Yellowstone. The four types of thermal features are geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. It is home to more than 500 active geysers (more than half the world’s geysers).
The park was established by the U.S. Congress on March 1, 1872, as the country’s first national park. Yellowstone was designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1976 and a World Heritage site in 1978.
The park which forms a square-like rectangle with an irregular eastern side, is 63 miles (101 km) from north to south and 54 miles (87 km) from east to west at its widest point and covers an area of 3,472 square miles (8,992 square km).
About 290 waterfalls can be found throughout Yellowstone’s 2.2 million acres. There are approximately 1,000 miles of hiking trails in the park Y
Yellowstone houses more than 720,000 museum items, including 30 historic vehicles, millions of archived documents, and more than 20,000 books (many rare), manuscripts, periodicals. (Some inputs / rewrite: David Solomon)