By Wednesday morning, the dark skies had cleared Livingston, Mont., A city of about 8,000 people that serves as the main north gate to Yellowstone. Although the chocolate-colored water had receded from the houses, the Yellowstone River remained high, with more rain expected this weekend, and residents faced a long summer without the main lever of the local economy. The entire park will be closed for about a week as authorities deal with damaged roads and demolished bridges, the park’s inspector, Cam Sholly, told a news conference late Tuesday. But entrances to the park’s north side, near Livingston and smaller tourist-dependent towns, are likely to remain inaccessible until Halloween. Point of Rocks Bridge over the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, about halfway between Livingston and Gardiner, is one of those major northern access points. Roads on both sides of the bridge were swept away by flooding and crews were working Wednesday to restore access so they could inspect the bridge itself. “The water is still high, there is a sorting situation in three counties, but this bridge is a priority,” said David Crumley, a bridge maintenance engineer for the Montana Department of Transportation. He said it could take several days for the bridge to be reused or more if it was severely damaged.
Severe weather in the USA
Visitors to the park described a surreal experience seeing grassy riverbanks that had walked a few hours before being flooded by overflowing lakes and rivers. “My heart goes out to people who have lost their homes or cannot return home,” said Donna Frishe, a 52-year-old Georgian tourist who was forced to evacuate. Mr Sholly, the park inspector, described floods and mud landslides caused by four days of rain and melting snow as “a thousand-year-old event, whatever that means these days.” “It seems to be happening more and more often.” He estimated that at least 10,000 people were visiting when the evacuations began. On Tuesday, as floods raged, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte declared a state of disaster. However, despite some painful moments, only one victim was reported, officials said, when someone died of a heart attack at a camp. Millions of tourists are attracted each year to the desert and active geysers in Yellowstone, the oldest national park in the United States, which spans more than two million acres in the northwest corner of Wyoming and in Montana and Idaho. In 2021, more than 4.8 million people visited it. America’s national parks have seen an increase in visitors during the coronavirus pandemic, but are facing increasing pressure as climate change and other factors create more extreme weather conditions, including droughts, fires and floods. In the coming decades, Yellowstone is expected to see an increase in fires, dying forests, expansive meadows, more invasive plants and shallower, warmer waterways. The storm that caused floods and mud landslides this week started with two to three inches of rain over the weekend. Combined with rising temperatures that melted 5.5 inches of snow, the rain created a major flood, Mr. Solly said. Officials evacuated visitors from the hit north of the park on Monday, and flooding continued to rage late Tuesday. Hundreds of homes were flooded in communities north of the park in Montana, including Gardiner and Cooke City, which were also cut off from food and clean water supplies, officials said. “Unfortunately, some forecasts suggest more heat and rain in four to five days, although there is still a foot of snow in the Yellowstone Mountains, increasing the chance of another series of floods,” Sholly said. Livia Albeck-Ripka and Christine Hauser contributed to the petition. Alain Delaquérière contributed to the research.
