Huge floodwaters destroyed Yellowstone National Park and nearby communities on Monday, washing away roads and bridges, cutting off power and forcing visitors to evacuate parts of the iconic park at the height of the summer tourist season. All entrances to Yellowstone were closed due to the flood, which was caused by heavy rainfall and snowmelt, while park officials drove tourists from the worst-hit areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries, although dozens of trapped campers had to be rescued by rafts in south-central Montana. Authorities also said they would assess a possible “loss of housing and construction” in Stillwater, Montana. Elsewhere, some of the worst damage occurred in northern Yellowstone and the park’s gateway communities in southern Montana. Photographs by the North Yellowstone National Park Service showed a landslide, a bridge washed up over a creek and roads severely damaged by the flood waters of the Gardner and Lamar rivers. The floods cut off road access to Gardiner, Montana, a city of about 900 people near the confluence of the Yellowstone and Gardner rivers, just outside the bustling Yellowstone North Entrance. In a cabin in the Gardiner, visitor Parker Manning from Terra Haute, Indiana, saw water rising up close and the river bank overflowing into the raging floodwaters of the Yellowstone River just outside its door. “We began to see whole trees floating in the river, debris,” Manning told the Associated Press. “I saw a crazy lonely kayak coming down, which was a bit crazy.” The Yellowstone River in Corwin Springs reached 13.88 feet (4.2 meters) on Monday, higher than the previous record of 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) set in 1918, according to the National Weather Service. Floodwaters flooded a road in Red Lodge, a city of 2,100 Montana residents that is a popular jump point for a scenic, winding trail in high Yellowstone County. Twenty-five miles (40 kilometers) northeast of the Joliet, Kristan Apodaca wiped away her tears as she stood across a washed-out bridge, the Billings Gazette reported. The wooden hut belonging to her grandmother, who died in March, flooded, as did the park where Apodaca’s husband proposed. “I’m sixth generation. This is our home,” he said. “This bridge I literally drove yesterday. My mom drove it at 3 in the morning before it was flushed.” Yellowstone officials evacuated the north side of the park, where roads may remain impassable for long periods of time, Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a statement. However, the flood also affected the rest of the park, with park officials warning of even greater flooding and possible problems with water supply and sewerage systems in developed areas. “We will not know when the park will reopen until the floodwaters recede and we are able to assess the damage to the entire park,” Soli said in a statement. The gates of the park will be closed until at least Wednesday, officials said. It was not clear how many visitors were forced to leave the park. The rains hit just as the summer tourist season was rising. June, at the start of an annual wave of over 3 million visitors that does not decrease until the fall, is one of Yellowstone’s busiest months. The remnants of winter – in the form of snow still melting and rushing from the mountains – created a particularly bad time for heavy rain to fall. Yellowstone received 2.5 inches (6 cm) of rain on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone reached up to 4 inches (10 cm), according to the National Weather Service. “It’s raining a lot, but the flood would not have happened if we had not had so much snow,” said Corey Motis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana. “It’s a flood we’ve never seen in our lives.” The rain is likely to subside while lower temperatures will reduce melting snow in the coming days, Mottice said. In south-central Montana, floods on the Stillwater River trapped 68 people in a campsite. Stillwater County emergency services and crews with Stillwater Mine rescued people Monday from Woodbine Campground with rafts. Some roads in the area have been closed due to flooding and residents have been evacuated. “We will assess the loss of homes and structures when the waters recede,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. The floods occurred while other parts of the US burned in hot and dry weather. More than 100 million Americans have been warned to stay indoors as a heat wave sweeps across states stretching from parts of the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and east to the Carolina. Elsewhere in the West, crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires in hot, dry, and stormy weather. Scientists say climate change is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme events such as storms, droughts, floods and fires, although isolated weather events usually cannot be directly linked to climate change without extensive study.
Current conditions of Yellowstone North Entrance Road through Gardner Canyon between Gardiner, Montana and Mammoth Hot Springs. We will continue to communicate about this dangerous situation as more information is available. More information: pic.twitter.com/S5ysi4wf8a – Yellowstone National Park (@YellowstoneNPS) June 13, 2022 —— Associated Press writers Thomas Peipert in Denver and Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, contributed to this report.
