As Yellowstone approaches its 150th anniversary, and for the first time since wildfires forced closure in 1988, all 5 public entrances to Yellowstone National Park are closed due to extreme flooding.
all entrances to Yellowstone National Park are temporarily CLOSED due to substantial flooding, rockslides and mudslides on roadways from recent unprecedented amounts of rainfall and flooding
"The river has never been this high before by my house," said Elizabeth Aluck, a resident of Gardiner, which serves as a gateway for visitors.
June precipitation has been more than 400% of average across northwestern Wyoming and southern Montana, according to CNN meteorologists.
That rain and June heat is also melting some heavy snow pack.
“It’s a lot of rain, but the flooding wouldn’t have been anything like this if we didn’t have so much snow,” said Cory Mottice, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Billings, Montana. “This is flooding that we’ve just never seen in our lifetimes before.”
News reports focus on recent heavy rain. None that I see mention how this follows a cool wet May for the Yellowstone region, along with most of the Northwest United States.
Too bad some of that can’t be shared with the megadrought stricken Southwest.
The jet stream of June 13th raises the question of whether this region is the winner of the excessive precipitation end of jet stream roulette this year. You can see that Yellowstone was right in the jet stream path on June 13th. Perhaps others more experienced in climatology can weigh in.
Overall, excessive precipitation and drought are both expected at the Earth warms. With heating, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, which recent scientific reports show is bound to lead to extreme precipitation in some areas while other regions experience drought.
almost two thirds of Earth’s habitable land surface will experience either drought or extreme wetting
Listen to the lead author from that PNAS publication interviewed on ecoshock.org. Unfortunately, extreme weather is no longer just a nightmare scenario dreamed up by extremists.
Worst of all in a super-heated future, extreme events like wildfires and floods can follow one another in quick succession, like a one-two punch.
Prepare the life rafts and water conservation.