Yellowstone National Park send an notification through the park’s Road Alert text and email system. A section of the East Entrance Road between the East Entrance and Pelican Valley will close June 12 12pm-2pm to mitigate a road condition.
This is a brief, almost non-event compared to around this time last year.
On June 13, 2022, Yellowstone National Park experienced a once-in-a-500-year-flood brought on by a number of coincidental factors that came together for the, wait for it, “perfect storm,” that would shut down the entire park for over a week.
Dense snowpack, which hadn’t melted yet, and high temperatures, combined with copious amounts of spring rain, to create a weather event that caused a massive amount of water that ran into the Yellowstone and Lamar rivers. The result was whole bridges were swept away, roads were washed out, rivers changed courses, and one house was washed near Gardiner, Montana.
In the days that led up to that fateful date of June 13, 2022, while 2-3 inches of rain pounded almost 6 inches of snow. That, combined with a spike in temps, created a massive flow of water along the northern range of the America’s first national park, catching park rangers and tourists alike, off-guard. This led to Yellowstone and Lamar Rivers swelling way above capacity which then rushed down its corresponding tributaries, in what was called a “500-year, or thousand -year flood.”
As water levels rose to what were record-breaking levels, Cam Sholly, Yellowstone Park’s Superintendent shut down the world-famous tourist destination in an abundance of caution. He rallied national and state agencies after the water recede and after 10 days, 90 percent of the park had re-opened.
But the Superintendent says that a year later, visitation to America’s first National Park has rebounded.
“Our inbound vehicle numbers are higher than in 2019, pre-COVID,” Sholly tells Cowboy State Daily.
Sholly estimates that before the deluge ripped through the northern part of Yellowstone, the summer of 2022 was looking like it could’ve been a busy year.
“Based on what we saw up until June 13, we probably would have surpassed 2019 (visitation numbers),” Sholly says.
But tourism has spiked this year.
“We’ve got almost three thousand cars a day on the north entrance road right now – on the new road – which is a higher number than what was coming in, in 2019,” Sholly notes optimistically.
