Flooding Chaos in Yellowstone, a Sign of Crises to Come

 

 Before evacuating their rental cabin on the edge of Yellowstone National Park, the Manning family watched a nearby house plunge from the riverbank into the raging, flood-swollen waters.

“The earth off the bank was coming off in sheets,” said Parker Manning, who had traveled from Terre Haute, Ind., to Yellowstone with his family for a summer vacation.

“It was crazy when the house, when the building, finally hit the water,” Mr. Manning said. “It was floating down the river like a boat.”

It is difficult to directly connect the damage in Yellowstone to a rapidly warming climate — rivers have flooded for millenniums — but scientists are raising the alarm that in the coming years destruction related to climate change will reach nearly all 423 national parks, which are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.

The litany of threats read like a biblical reckoning: fire and flood, melting ice sheets, rising seas and heat waves...MORE