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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.
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 17 2022, @12:00PM (1 child)
But looks like most of the southern side features are accessible (Old Faithful and the Firehole River area, Norris Geyser basin, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Yellowstone Lake area).
Currently, I'm hearing that Yellowstone will reopen on Monday, but that could be punted back again (it's already been postponed a couple of times for a few days). It sounds like the big delay is that they're trying to get all bridges and roads inspected before reopening.
I'm hearing rumors that they're creating a lottery system for access to the park though it sounds like people with existing reservations in the park would be allowed in. If such a system goes through, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a permanent thing in the long run - due to the massive and growing visitation and use of the park. It is interesting how emergency measures can linger.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 27 2022, @03:11AM
Still weird to me how a few inches of rain caused so much trouble.