All entrances to Yellowstone National Park have been closed indefinitely and visitors evacuated after heavy rain and flooding washed away roads and triggered rockslides.
With flood levels “beyond record levels” and rainfall expected for the next several days, park officials are spending Tuesday accessing the damages. The park has seen multiple road and bridge failures, power outages, and mudslides, reports USA Today.
Visitors were evacuated from the northern section of the park, where there were multiple mudslides and where the roads and bridges have failed, park superintendent Cam Sholly said on Monday.
Parts of the community of Gardiner, a hamlet of about 800 people that serves as the main northern entrance to the park, had no power or water and were receiving aid from the authorities in Montana, Sholly said.
Mr. Sholly said the timing of the park’s reopening was uncertain until officials were able to assess the damage. “It is likely that the northern loop will be closed for a substantial amount of time,” he said, according to the New York Times.
Heavy rain on Sunday and snowmelt unleashed the flooding, which will continue to make its way through the river system on Tuesday through northwest Wyoming and southwest Montana, the National Weather Service said.
Jason Straub, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Yellowstone got 2.5 inches of rain Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. The Beartooth Mountains northeast of Yellowstone got as much as 4 inches.
“It’s a lot of rain, but the flooding wouldn’t have been anything like this if we didn’t have so much snow,” one meteorologist with the NWS said. “This is flooding that we’ve just never seen in our lifetimes before.”
The weather system also spilled into the southwestern reaches of Montana, affecting residents in Park County, along the edge of the park. Patients and staff at a hospital in Livingston, Mont., were evacuated on Monday as a precaution amid surging floodwaters, and emergency cases were diverted, the facility said.
