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Journal by khallow
There's a huge bunch of flooding in Yellowstone National Park. It started with heavy rain yesterday that led to a mass melting of the high altitude snowpack. Net result is instant 100 year floods on multiple rivers through Wyoming and Montana. Here's a video of some of the flooding. That video shows the North Entrance road which comes into the park from the northwest side (starting at a town, Gardiner, Montana) and runs along side the Gardiner River, which is a minor river which dumps into the Yellowstone River - the latter is the largest tributary of the Missouri River.
Anyway, this shows the crazy erosion power of a mountain river that's flooding. With normal spring melt level (which is when the river is at its routine highest seasonally), the river moderately erodes its banks, but hasn't threatened the road in decades. But with this higher level of flooding, the road has been completely cut through in five places in the video. In addition to the road bridge (which is still in place in the video), there was a trail bridge about a mile north of the road bridge which was washed out too (it's almost center in the last frame, you can see a pull out on the right between road and river with a trail on both sides of the river - the bridge would have been in between the trail parts).
Finally, I linked to the map so you can see what the stretch looked like before the flooding. The helicopter is flying from south to north along the road. By coincidence, the video starts about where the tag is on the map.
Anyway, this shows the crazy erosion power of a mountain river that's flooding. With normal spring melt level (which is when the river is at its routine highest seasonally), the river moderately erodes its banks, but hasn't threatened the road in decades. But with this higher level of flooding, the road has been completely cut through in five places in the video. In addition to the road bridge (which is still in place in the video), there was a trail bridge about a mile north of the road bridge which was washed out too (it's almost center in the last frame, you can see a pull out on the right between road and river with a trail on both sides of the river - the bridge would have been in between the trail parts).
Finally, I linked to the map so you can see what the stretch looked like before the flooding. The helicopter is flying from south to north along the road. By coincidence, the video starts about where the tag is on the map.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Do not use if foil seal is broken.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday June 14 2022, @04:21AM (4 children)
Yeah, water will move earth in a hurry, boulders, road, and all. Quite impressive.
To the east, Red Lodge is getting flooded (Billings Gazette has a couple vids up on Youtube). I haven't been down to look at the Yellowstone River since last week, but it was rushing along brim-full before this last patch of rain. Fortunately nothing much along its low banks, so unlikely to cause much damage even if it goes up several feet.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday June 14 2022, @09:47PM (3 children)
TV show, "Disasters of the Century", produced 20 years ago, in reruns. Episode I caught a bit of recently about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam [wikipedia.org]
tl:dr version: https://www.britannica.com/event/St-Francis-Dam-disaster [britannica.com]
The building-size concrete block, 63' x 30' x 54' (19.2m x 9.1m x 16.5m), that moved 1/2 mile (0.8 km) puts the power of moving water in perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St._Francis_abutment.jpg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:11PM (2 children)
Ah, thanks for the reminder... I'm familiar with that area, having driven through there many times (used to live in the area), tho hadn't seen photos of the HOLY CRAP building mover effect. But to this day there are visibly water-scoured areas all the way down to where the canyon kinks, both up on the walls and the sad remains of the old road down in the bottom. It's still regarded as unstable and is largely blocked off.
"The largest piece, weighing approximately 10,000 tons (9,000 metric tons) was found about three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) below the dam site."
Who knew it was possible to go concrete surfing...
And for more fun with gargantuan floods.... how eastern Washington got to be how it is:
https://hugefloods.com/ [hugefloods.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Wednesday June 15 2022, @01:30AM (1 child)
Another huge flood in geologic time is the filling of the Mediterranean Sea. It dried out and refilled several times in the last million years or so, as the strait of Gibraltar opened and closed.
Evaporation in the Mediterranean is so intense that there's a regular inflow water from the Atlantic.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday June 15 2022, @02:21AM
That one I don't know much about (thanks for reminding me, I'll have to go look it up), but Gibraltar is sure one heck of a pinch point.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.