Yellowstone CLOSED, All Gates - Flooding, Mudslides

[rionapo]

More videos coming out, including this one from Channel 9 in Denver of a building collapsing into the Yellowstone River near Gardiner, Montana. They have more on their YouTube channel.

https://youtu.be/bMr3zyZWDrs

[MarinBlaine]

What is amazing to me is that it seems like only 2" of rain +/- caused all this devastation. Ultimately as I understand it, it has been a cool spring and much of the snow still hadn't melted...there was even some recent snow. But it looks to be the rain that fell on the snow caused a very quick melt-off which caused this. Here in Marin, we get 2" of rain all the time...heck, we've gotten 6-8" a few times, and last fall we got something like 9.5" in 24 hours. But I guess they just don't get that kind of rain in Yellowstone.

[Orv]

Originally Posted by MarinBlaine

What is amazing to me is that it seems like only 2" of rain +/- caused all this devastation. Ultimately as I understand it, it has been a cool spring and much of the snow still hadn't melted...there was even some recent snow. But it looks to be the rain that fell on the snow caused a very quick melt-off which caused this. Here in Marin, we get 2" of rain all the time...heck, we've gotten 6-8" a few times, and last fall we got something like 9.5" in 24 hours. But I guess they just don't get that kind of rain in Yellowstone.

A rain-on-snow event can be really bad because not only does it trigger rapid melting, usually the ground is still frozen so none of it can soak in. When I was in college we had a similar event on a smaller scale in northern MI and it caused a lot of road washouts as all the water took off downhill.

[jim2901]

Apparently the New Mexico Calf Canyon Fire was caused by a pile burn holdover from January that remained dormant under the surface through three winter snow events before reemerging in April. https://nmfireinfo.com/2022/05/27/fi...f-canyon-fire/
Jim