Just three months ago, the Yellowstone region was dragging through an extended drought with little snow in the mountains and wildfire scars from when the area was hit by 105 F heat and fire a year ago. But rivers and creeks this week raged with water much higher and faster than even the rare benchmark 500 year flood. Scientists explain how the region went from drought and fire to heavy snow and rain.
A house sits in Rock Creek after floodwaters washed away a road and a bridge in Red Lodge, Mont., June 15, 2022. Just three months ago, the Yellowstone region like most of the West was dragging through an extended drought with little snow in the mountains and wildfire scars in Red Lodge from a year ago when the area was hit by 105 F heat and fire.
It was a textbook case of "weather weirding," said Red Lodge resident and National Snow and Ice Data Center deputy lead scientist Twila Moon. Her cropped hair was up in a sweat band and she was covered head to toe in mud from helping residents clear out flooded areas. Things looked good. The drought wasn't quite busted -- in fact Thursday's national drought monitor still puts 84% of Montana under unusually dry or full-fledged drought conditions -- but it was better. Then came too much of a moist thing. Heavy rains poured in thanks to a water-laden atmosphere turbocharged by warmer than normal Pacific water. And when it poured, it melted. The equivalent of nine inches of rain flowed down Montana mountain slopes in some places.
"A lot of these roads had existed for decades and had not seen any sort of flood damage like what we saw," said Lance VandenBoogart, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. And while Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana had bigger snowpacks from a cold, wet spring, areas south of that were extremely dry with anemic to missing late spring snows, said UCLA climate scientist and western weather expert Daniel Swain.
"What is extraordinary is the combination of that high snowpack that got built up in April, May, together with this rainfall event and the warmer conditions," Lall said. "That's where the flooding is coming from."
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