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khallow (3766)
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Tuesday June 14, 22
03:37 AM
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.
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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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @02:10PM (7 children)
they can just move on higher ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 14 2022, @08:19PM
Aquaman is going to make a killing on distressed properties.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:03PM (5 children)
I know you're striving hard to be sarcastic. But yes, they can do that. Or rebuild and just expect it to wash away every so often.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:14PM (2 children)
Around here we learn better, which is why in days of yore, the entire town of Three Forks MT (which area is probably getting the downstream high water from yesterday) was packed up and moved to higher ground.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday June 14 2022, @11:05PM (1 child)
Interesting. I didn't know anyone ever actually moved a town, but you reminded me of a crazy somewhat similar but bizarre thing:
https://www.britannica.com/video/187023/coal-mine-fire-Pennsylvania-Centralia [britannica.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire [wikipedia.org]
https://uncoveringpa.com/visiting-centralia [uncoveringpa.com]
https://www.centraliapa.org/ [centraliapa.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Wednesday June 15 2022, @12:21AM
There have been maybe a dozen towns that I've heard of, moved due to a new dam, or some disaster, or... yeah, Centralia.
Underground fires can smoulder along for years and come up somewhere unexpected. Old manure layered up, as it gets in livestock pens, is almost as bad as coal. Rancher hereabouts had a fire in his stable yard that he'd thought was out, but it crawled entirely under his barn and came up again in another pen.... eight months later. (Ended up doing a lot of digging to make sure they got it all.) Then there was the fire department doing training exercises on the airport's back 40... without realizing there's an old asphalt runway under the grass. They did their training and went home, and three days later clear on the other side of the old runway, up come the flames. (At the time I lived just across the road, so got to see that one firsthand.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @05:53AM (1 child)
Last I checked, statisticians aren't allowed to issue building permissions, especially when the recommended building sites are on mountain slopes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 15 2022, @06:40PM
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday June 14 2022, @10:02PM
A road along a river like that got washed on in British Columbia a few months back.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 15 2022, @12:41AM
Even if it's wrong, it does have appeal to me because it illustrates some of the problems with large investment firms in the US, such as the incest and the many opportunities to play games like this.
(Score: 4, Informative) by dalek on Wednesday June 15 2022, @08:10AM
This sounds all too familiar to me, unfortunately. Back in 2019, there was a similar situation in eastern Nebraska. The results were devastating.
On February 23, there was a blizzard that dropped many inches of snow. There were other snow events in central and eastern Nebraska after that. Temperatures were generally quite cold for that time of year, maintaining significant snow depth into mid-March. The cold temperatures increased the amount of ice on the rivers.
Then on March 13, there was a powerful extratropical cyclone that produced heavy rain over much of area that had a lot of snow on the ground. Two to three inches of precipitation fell, much of it as rain, melting the snow that had been on the ground. Because of the snow cover and the cold temperatures, the ground was frozen, so virtually all of the melted snow and the rain was runoff instead of being absorbed into the ground. Water levels rose rapidly, and the flooding was exacerbated by ice jams on the rivers. The damage in eastern Nebraska and even into western Iowa was catastrophic. A dam was breached on the Niobrara River, and there were levee breaches even on the Missouri River.
One of the largest cities in the area, Lincoln, actually had to order residents to greatly reduce water usage because the city was running low on water. Lincoln doesn't get its water from rivers like the Platte or the Missouri. Instead, much of the water is drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer by pumps near the Platte River. The damage from the flooding knocked out electricity to the pumps, causing a water shortage amid the extreme flooding.
Generally when you have heavy rain rapidly melting a lot of snow, you're going to have the potential for flooding. If temperatures have been cold, and the ground is frozen, it's going to make the situation worse because very little of the water will be absorbed into the ground. In 2019, there was enough heavy precipitation and melted snow over a large enough area to create a pulse of water that caused record flooding on the Missouri River from the mouth of the Platte River to St. Joseph and moderate flooding all the way to St. Louis.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest just whinge about SN.
(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.