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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, JULY 9, 2022
Yellowstone fl oods reveal forecasting fl aws in warming world
Weather models do not
always keep up
By MATTHEW BROWN and
AMY BETH HANSON
Associated Press
BILLINGS, Mont. — The Yel-
lowstone National Park area’s
weather forecast the morning
of June 12 seemed fairly tame:
warmer temperatures and rain
showers would accelerate moun-
tain snow melt and could pro-
duce minor fl ooding. A National
Weather Service bulletin recom-
mended moving livestock from
low-lying areas but made no men-
tion of danger to people.
By nightfall, after several inches
of rain fell on a deep spring snow-
pack, there were record-shattering
fl oods.
Torrents of water poured off
the mountains. Swollen rivers car-
rying boulders and trees smashed
through Montana towns over the
next several days. The fl ooding
swept away houses, wiped out
bridges and forced the evacuation
of more than 10,000 tourists, park
employees and residents near the
park.
As a cleanup expected to last
months grinds on, climate experts
and meteorologists say the gap
between the destruction and what
was forecast underscores a trou-
blesome aspect of climate change:
Models used to predict storm
impacts do not always keep up
with increasingly devastating rain-
storms, hurricanes, heat waves and
other events.
“Those rivers had never reached
those levels. We literally were fl y-
ing blind not even knowing what
the impacts would be,” said Arin
Peters, a senior hydrologist with
the National Weather Service.
Hydrologic models used to pre-
dict fl ooding are based on long-
term, historical records. But they
do not refl ect changes to the cli-
mate that emerged over the past
decade, said meteorologist and
Weather Underground founder Jeff
Masters.
“Those models are going to be
inadequate to deal with a new cli-
mate,” Masters said.
Another extreme weather event
where the models came up short
was Hurricane Ida, which slammed
David Goldman/AP Photo
A house sits in Rock Creek after fl oodwaters washed away a road and a bridge in Montana in June.
Louisiana last summer and then
stalled over the Eastern Seaboard
— deluging parts of Pennsylvania,
New Jersey and New York with
unprecedented rainfall that caused
massive fl ooding.
The weather service had warned
of a serious situation that could
turn catastrophic, but the predicted
of 3 to 6 inches of rain for New
York, New Jersey and Pennsyl-
vania was far short of the 9 to 10
inches that fell.
The deadly June 2021 heat
wave that scorched the Pacifi c
Northwest off ered another exam-
ple. Warmer weather had been
expected, but not temperatures of
up to 116 degrees that toppled pre-
vious records and killed an esti-
mated 600 or more people in Ore-
gon, Washington state and western
Canada.
The surprise Yellowstone fl oods
prompted a nighttime scramble to
close off roads and bridges get-
ting swept away by the water, plus
rushed evacuations that missed
some people. No one died, some-
what miraculously, as more than
400 homes were damaged or
destroyed.
As rock slides caused by the
rainfall started happening in Yel-
lowstone, park rangers closed a
heavily-used road between the
town of Gardiner and the park
headquarters in Mammoth Hot
Springs, Wyoming. It later washed
out in numerous places.
The rain and snowmelt was
“too much too fast and you just try
to stay out of the way,” Yellow-
stone Deputy Chief Ranger Tim
Townsend said.
If the road hadn’t been closed,
“we probably would have had
fatalities, unquestionably” park
Superintendent Cam Sholly said.
“The road looks totally fi ne and
then it’s like an 80-foot drop right
into the river,” Sholly said.
Within a matter of hours on
June 12, Rock Creek, which runs
through the city of Red Lodge and
normally is placid and sometimes
just ankle deep, became a rag-
ing river. When the weather ser-
vice issued a fl ood warning for the
creek, the water already had surged
over its banks and begun to knock
down bridges.
By the time the warning was
sent, “we already knew it was too
late,” said Scott Williams, a com-
missioner for Carbon County, Mon-
tana, which borders Yellowstone.
Red Lodge resident Pam Smith
was alerted to the fl oods by some-
thing knocking around in her base-
ment before dawn. It was her
clothes dryer, fl oating in water
pouring through the windows.
Smith said her partner keeps
track of the weather on his com-
puter and they were aware rain was
coming and that the creek was run-
ning high. But they were not aware
of the fl ooding threat when they
went to bed the night before, she
said.
In a scramble to save belong-
ings including her violins, the
music teacher slipped on the wet
kitchen fl oor and fell, shattering
a bone in her arm. Smith recalls
biting back tears and trudging
through fl oodwaters with her part-
ner and 15-year-old granddaugh-
ter to reach their pickup truck and
drive to safety.
“I went blank,” Smith said. “I
was angry and like, ‘Why didn’t
anybody warn us? Why was there
no knock on the door? Why didn’t
the police come around and say
there’s fl ooding, you need to get
out?’”
Local authorities say sher-
iff ’s deputies and others knocked
on doors in Red Lodge and a sec-
ond community that fl ooded. But
they acknowledged not everyone
was reached as numerous rivers
and streams overfl owed, swamp-
ing areas never known previously
to fl ood.
While no single weather event
can be conclusively tied to climate
change, scientists said the Yel-
lowstone fl ooding was consistent
with changes already documented
around the park as temperatures
warm.
Those changes include less
snowfall in midwinter and more
spring precipitation — setting the
stage for fl ash fl oods when rains
fall on the snow, said Montana
State University climate scientist
Cathy Whitlock.
Warming trends mean spring
fl oods will increase in frequency
— even as the region suff ers from
long-term drought that keeps much
of the rest of the year dry, she said.
Masters and other experts noted
that computer modeling of storms
has become more sophisticated and
is generally more accurate than ever.
But extreme weather by its nature is
hard to predict, and as such events
happen more frequently there will
be many more chances for forecast-
ers to get it wrong.
The rate of the most extreme
rainstorms in some areas has
increased up to a factor of fi ve,
Masters said. So an event with a
1% chance of happening in any
given year — commonly referred
to as a “1 in 100-year” event —
would have an approximately 5%
chance of happening, he said.
“We are literally rewriting our
weather history book,” said Uni-
versity of Oklahoma meteorology
professor Jason Furtado.
That has widespread impli-
cations for local authorities and
emergency offi cials who rely on
weather bulletins to guide their
disaster response approaches. If
they’re not warned, they can’t act.
But the National Weather Ser-
vice also strives to avoid undue
alarm and maintain public trust.
So if the service’s models show
only a slim chance of disaster, that
information can get left out of the
forecast.
Weather service offi cials said
the agency’s actions with the Yel-
lowstone fl ooding will be analyzed
to determine if changes are needed.
They said early warnings that river
levels were rising did help offi cials
prepare and prevent loss of life,
even if their advisories failed to
predict the severity.
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