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Id' quickly say, now that they had a disaster of huge proportions, nature made them the necessary infrastructure placement for the next one! Add some human knowledge and ingenuity to correct places and there you go, no fuss when next similiar incident happens.
My Dad is an engineer. Growing up, we had a whiteboard in the dining room where he could illustrate the cool projects he was working on while we ate dinner. He specialized in dams, but did side projects, too. The dam work was physically very challenging: he had to be rope certified since he was rappelling down and in some cases inside of these gigantic structures, sometimes with lots of equipment. I love your videos because they remind me of those dinner time conversations.
I’m a park employee in Yellowstone. I was never evacuated from the park so I got to experience the rare sight of a nearly empty Yellowstone during the summer. As a temporary measure the old Gardiner road, a stagecoach route that had been used as a one-way scenic route and bike path for many years has been expanded and is already in use for employees and tour groups from Gardiner mt. It’s convenient because it’s an already set path that has been surveyed and it doesn’t follow the course of the river so there’s less chance of further collapse. Communities on the northeast entrance of the park require quick fixes to the roads because otherwise, they are trapped, as the Beartooth pass, the only other way out besides the park roads closes in the winter.
I really miss camping, fishing, and hiking the weekends in the park back in the 80's. It was never overcrowded like it is now. We could ride the roads and hardly see much traffic at all, even during peak times. I lived a few hour drive from the park, and would pack up the motorcycle with camping gear on the weekends and head into the park
Jesus Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead, and gives salvation to everyone who has faith in him. True faith in Jesus will have you bear good fruit and *drastically* change for the better! Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. God is three in one; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE! Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals! The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil. I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God.
As a Montanan, I appreciate you covering this. There were quite a few people complaining that their "Vacation was ruined", not realizing the extent of the damage that was done. I have friends of friends that were affected by these huge floods, and it's nice to see such a well put together explanation of what happened. I appreciate the work and detail you put into your videos!!
You can't blame them for complaining, as long as they're giving credit to Mother Nature for doing it. She ruins a lot of things without advanced notice! (They understand you're dilemma too--I'm sure. (at least I HOPE they do...))
It's scary how people are so focused on themselves. They come to an area where people just faced a natural disaster, lost a lot of their infrastructure and probably face lots of damage to their properties and belongings and they are most worried about their vacation not being as great as they expected. Like as if you would go to a party only to find out that your friends house where the party was planned just burned down and you complain about the fact that you now don't have a party.
@@nobody7817 you might be shocked to know most people are self centered and especially if they're complaining about their vacation being ruined, they aren't being empathetic to the ones who were seriously affected.
My family and I just returned from Yellowstone less than 24 hours ago. The repairs and associated reopening of the park is a direct testament to the engineers and contractors working this project. The northern routes were closed for repair and I am glad as the communities in the north border area rely upon these routes for not only tourism but daily life. My hat is off to everyone working hard to restore services to this gem of a national park. As always, an excellent presentation, Grady.
Everytime I see some of the "great outdoors" places you have in the US like in Montana, oregon, etc. I always get a sense of wonder I get why activities like camping, hunting, road tripping are so popular in the US, your landscapes are GORGEOUS !
Thank you, yes, we are so fortunate to have such a huge variety of beautiful natural places in this country. I live for the “road trip” in the Western US, there are so many wonderful places and the distances are so vast, no one can possibly see them all. With my family, as a child, we took a trip from San Francisco across the southwest. I gave me my love of the wild outdoors and geology, so I became a geologist when I grew up.
Exactly , even our backyards are awesome. I took a road trip yesterday to Northern New Hampshire to see the foliage. You see waterfalls from the roadway. Lots of people everywhere camping , hiking , playing golf in one of the most beautiful remote regions of USA. Only took me 2.5 hours from my home in the suburbs
Hunting doesn't really belong on this list. Hunting is just something you can do while camping. But it's still the camping trip that's allowing you to see the natural beauty. Hunting doesn't add anything to that.
I was at Yellowstone a few weeks ago and while at Mammoth I had the opportunity to talk to an Army Corp of Engineers Ranger who was there as part of a large deployment working on the recovery. One interesting detail is that the services at Mammoth were at an absolute minimum and the reason is that the fresh water and sewage systems can’t handle all the staff and over night guests, but can handle day use.
I don't think most people realize that across the road from the Mammoth campground there is an entire small neighborhood where a lot of the rangers and staff live.
That's super interesting...! It really shows just how complex and deep the considerations have to be in such projects. I would have never guessed that fresh water would be an issue to all those people, but it makes so much sense.
Jesus Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead, and gives salvation to everyone who has faith in him. True faith in Jesus will have you bear good fruit and *drastically* change for the better! Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness. God is three in one; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him! As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE! Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals! The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil. I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God.
Headed there shortly for a TON! of testing for DOT and Structural steel inspections. Its gonna be a long season. Wish all of us engineers and the workers luck!
I was at Yellowstone less than a month before this event (right at the end of pre-season). It was amazing experiencing winter, spring, or summer just by driving only a few miles from where I had just been, and in a place with such awe inspiring terrain. One day I was in snowfall as deep as my hips, and just 15 minutes later was in a completely different climate wearing only a t shirt and shorts
Same here. Two very hot days, followed by a rainy day, then snow fell. Got lucky and got to go I to the Lamar Valley for the single day it opened 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
Your data is the bees knees. I've use GIS data for personal projects any time I need geographic data. It's easy to access and use. One of the great public goods in this country. So cheers, your job is super helpful to millions of people.
haha sorry thats an Orlando Jones quote from evolution when he uses his USGS digest I.D. to get access to the meteor popped into my head for some reason
I've visited yellowstone from europe just one day before the big rainfall. My plan was actually to be there 2 days later but my road trip turned up to be a bit faster than i thought. I guess i am really lucky that i could see the beauty of the park before this big rainstorm. Sad to see how destructive it was. I didn't know it happened untill 2 days later when i was talking to some local people in Cody WY.
My first time to Yellowstone National Park and it flooded, at first I thought it was normal, no signs of people getting evacuated until we were told to start heading out later that day by park rangers. Never underestimate the power of nature. Unforgettable experience
Fantastic video The 80,000 hours thing is interesting to me. I've been retired almost 3 years and the one thing that has surprised me most is the amount of time I now have versus when I was working. The 80,000 hours, by the way, doesn't include" commute time work prep time (washing work clothes, making sure other life people/events are taken care of while you are away at work) Worrying about what's going on at work I'm glad there's a non profit out there trying to help people select the best career for them. You always hear people say "pick a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life". I've always said that saying is technically true but is mostly BS because most of us wind up having to "take" the first opportunity that presents itself due to economic necessity. (being broke).
When youre working your free time is like a 5-6 hour chunk. Life flies by. I did 5 years working 100 hours a week, felt like a blink. I had to quit and go see the world.
I love your videos man. You give us normies a more detailed (but still consumable and understandable) explanation of what's going on with all the things you talk about. Definitely in my top 10 educational channels I watch. Especially when it comes to civil engineering. Keep up the good work, it's appreciated!
It's not just a matter of tourism for some towns. Cooke City, and Silver Gate, MT in the winter are completely dependent on the northern route through the park to Gardiner for food, fuel, medical support, and their children's schooling once the Beartooth Pass closes for winter due to the extreme conditions there. They only have a few weeks until Red Lodge, MT and Cody, WY become completely inaccessible. Without an emergency road, those towns will have to be abandoned barring some sort of Berlin Airlift level of resupply unless they can manage to keep the Beartooth Highway open up to at least the Chief Joseph back to Cody.
That is true, but like practical engineering said, hasty repairs can damage the park or create more work for a long term road reconstruction. Those communities will be affected, but it is arguably a good trade off. I’m sure a good solution can be found anyway
So, as someone who has never visited that area, why aren't there other easily accessible roads in and out of those towns? Does it have to do with running through the national park itself (unless I'm mistaken about there being very heavy regulations on where you can/can't build roads and such)? Is the geography such that those two roads are the only viable constructs, logistically and financially? Like I said, I don't live there, nor have I ever been to Yellowstone (though I probly should once in my lifetime), so "Build more roads" sounds like a perfectly logical statement to make to me without any context.
This video got me thinking about the beach erosion we experience around the county. Specifically, the Outer Banks in North Carolina has changing sands from currents and storms and beaches that need to be repaired. It would be really neat to see a video about beach nourishment efforts and how they pump sand from the sea onto the islands to help with catastrophic storms. Keep up the awesome work!!
Another great video, Grady! I'm happy to announce that after watching your 100-year flood video (repeatedly, until it stuck) I was able to understand what you mean by a 500-year flood, and even figured out the 0.2% chance in my head before you said it. You are an excellent teacher!
Grady, I know a lot of people won’t care because it’s a small community in east Kentucky, but we received over 11 inches of rain in a few hours, totally devastating the place. Would like to hear your input on some of the causes of the massive flooding here
Actually followed the sponsor for the first time ever, sounds like a cool idea. Good choice, a nonprofit is way better than the usual stuff other channels go for.
In Scotland, we had a similar rain storm in 2015 called “Storm Frank”. A 500 metre section of highway called the A93 was washed away due to river erosion between the villages of Ballater and Braemar, both in the Cairngorms national park. And yet, they reopened the road 3 weeks later. They didn’t repair the road, they re-routed it a respectable distance away from the river bank! Ordinarily such a project would take years worth of planning, budget allocation, red tape etc….. but in times of emergency it’s interesting to see how quickly they can exercise compulsory purchase orders, make drawings for a new road and let contracts out to build that road. 7 years later, that re-routed road is permanent and has a condition / geometry that’s no worse than the previous section of road. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was one of the cheapest sections of new road to be built on a per mile basis in recent years.
Probably cost the same, the difference was it was paid to the actual guys on the ground for a crazy amount of work in a short time, vs being paid to engineers to "value engineer" for 5 years.
As a rockhound, I wish I were able to see all the cool rocks that were washed down with the flooding. Bet there is going to be some legendary finds coming out of there for the next few years.
@@_MikeJon_ Not sure about fossils as how do fossils handle Caldera collapses? I can't imagine it being a gental process as the underlying rock crumbles under its own weight and overlying volcanic ejecta as it falls into the void left after the magma chamber underlying it partially emptied. Remember that Yellowstone park is primarily contained within 3 overlapping calderas from the volcanic complexes 3 most recent super eruptions over the last 3 million years, while some new younger fossils may have formed the collapse of the overlying rock as the magma chamber emptied out would have jumbled up much of the original terrain with volcanic ejecta. The subsequent refilling of the magma chambers and the flow of hydrothermal fluids and even magmatic intrusions into the crust would then also have led to widespread hydrothermal alternation thus metamorphosing the remaining rock. This is great conditions for the deposition of valuable mineral veins both from natural precipitation and microbial chemosynthetic activity but not so great for fossils that managed to survive the collapse brecciation process. And since it seems it always comes up every time volcanism is mentioned in Yellowstone, in regards for concerns of future eruptions while they can't be ruled out for now it appears the two underlying magma chambers have largely crystalized thus barring fresh intrusions to reenergize the systems a major eruption doesn't seem likely any time soon. The current park thanks to tectonic drift is getting further away from the underlying Yellowstone hotspot thus fresh intrusions become les likely over time forcing much of the hot spots thermal output to be directed into melting a new outlet through the ancient North American craton Laurentia proper which appears to extend well below the surface of the crust into the mantle.
Glad no one was hurt, and I hope they're able to figure it out before too long; just noticed your channel logo behind you though, I'm not sure how long that's been there, but it's an amusing addition SuperVinlin
When we were in Gardner in July, a shop owner said they agreed for a temporary upgrade of an old stage coach trail to restore northern access, and then 2-3 years for a new road. They can’t simply repair the old road because of the extensive damage, so they’ll have to do new routes. I hope the northern towns survive this.
@@HenryLoenwindNot just the ground underneath but the mountainsides that the road ran against. Because of those landslides, they can't just simply fill-in the old areas; they would have to blast entire mountain sides to make space again.
@@christopherwarsh That area from Gardiner to Mammoth has mountainsides of some EXTREMELY loose rock, it's completely inevitable that many more landslides will happen onto that road. They are better off moving the main road from the riverside to the area of the old stagecoach road.
@@HenryLoenwind Oh, it still exists, it's just not there any more. It's off downstream somewhere. Good thing it's not like the UK National Park Authority, who would probably require you to go get the original ground.
I am incredibly curious to see how the north entrance roads are dealt with. That north entrance and road from mammoth to livingston is the only route open to vehicles during the winter and on top of that the only way for those living & visiting cooke city to get in and out of town. I grew up in Bozeman, make yearly trips back home and down to Yellowstone still and was in shock seeing the road I frequent in the winter being washed away by the floods. Thanks for covering this, especially for those who are having to live through it.
We had a similar incident last year with an "atmospheric river" that hit BC with an unprecedented amount of rainfall twice in two weeks, and as a result, sections of the Coquihala Highway (which connects the Vancouver area to the interior of the province) were washed away. Looking at the damage in videos, I thought for sure it would be years before the highway is restored, but it reopened mere weeks later (albeit in minimal capacity, simply to restore the critical link), thanks to amazing engineering and construction teams. I drove it for the first time since the flooding last weekend, and while it's still not back to 100%, it's amazing to see both the damage and the rebuilding.
thanks to Highway Through Hell, a lot of us are familiar with the Coq. back around the turn of the century, we had two hundred year floods in close succession. the second one either washed out or inundated every possible road out of my hometown.
Same in New Zealand. I mean, we usually have PNW levels of rain here, but this year has been atmospheric rivers, one after another and I can't remember another like it. We're on the east coast rain shadow side, but my family on the west of the SI have been hammered.
A lot of those roads, bridges, walkways and stuff in Yellowstone my dad helped build. He was a trained carpenter. He was born in 1898, and was 50bwhen i was born. It was during the Great Depression. And part of the WPA was building roads, walks, fences bridges etc. My dad was one of many local workers who were employed there. It was due to his extensive work in Yellowstone including a lot of out of the way locations that we, as kids, got to visit a lot of those features. I grew up primarily in Madison and Gallatin counties in Montana, although for the few years we lived near Anaconda while my dad worked at the old smelter there was a break in that. As kids even after he died we had so many Sunday picnics in Yellowstone that we couldn't keep count.
I work at the Army Corps of Engineers and we were going to put together a team to aid in flood fighting but the flood ended so fast there ended up being no reason to send anyone. It's now up to the local engineers to work on repairs. But who knows, they might need aid from our office. This bomb cyclone was quite similar to the flooding of the Missouri river basin of 2019
I see something that like this on news and take everything with a grain of salt. Those newscasters often get details wrong and don’t understand much of anything. Then, I watch a video like this from you and get the real story. Thanks!
I was working in cooke city MT, just outside the northeast entrance when the floods hit. I was eventually forced to leave in find work elsewhere because there wasn’t enough traffic. Love to see the coverage on this event
I remember we were going to head through Yellowstone to get to our home in Idaho. At the time we didn’t realize the park was closed until we drove 2 hours to the entrance just to turn around and to go into Montana then get back into Idaho. It was sad we weren’t able to tell that there was flooding until we got to the entrance gate which was closed. I did see the Yellowstone River and I will say it was pretty high when I was driving through during the flooding.
Grady; you're one of those guys I'd like to sit next to at a bar for some smalll talk. I feel smarter every time I watch one of your videos. I'm not smarter, but I feel smarter for having listened to you for 20 minutes. Thank you for explaining complex subjects, and presenting them for the average working man.
I live way downstream in North Dakota on Lake Sakakawea and due to the long time drought while there was a giant influx of water, we hardly noticed it here. This whole system is fascinating. Thanks for doing a great job explaining it.
I really enjoyed this video. But what I found most helpful was your sponsor! I’ve been searching for a job for 2 years (I graduated with a environmental science degree) and am honestly extremely exhausted from my constant search. This sponsor has brought me a little hope that I will be able to find a job soon.
Great work. You make complex things/situations/events understandable. I've only watched two of your videos so far. This one and "What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?" And while I'm not ready to engineer a dam or reconstruct failed infrastructure, I have a better understanding of what happened at both events. It also has help me to understand that while we can do our best, sometimes there are things we can't see, didn't fully comprehend, and a host of other things can impact out endeavors. Another thing I learned, how cascade failure can be more than the total of the parts.
As an Architectural designer, I always find your subject matter informative. Good job Grady. Several years ago I rode my motorcycle from southern Colorado to Yellowstone. I camped first in the Tetons, explored the park then into Montana, back into the north end and exited west into into Idaho.
As someone from Wales that comparison was very informative. Thanks! :D On a side note, there is one natural disaster that could happen in Yellowstone that nobody on Earth would avoid being impacted by, but hopefully that caldera will remain dormant for time to come.
The Cauldera is only at 15% fullness so there is no need to worry about it for the next several hundred years, despite what some fear mongering tabloids or Hollywood movies say.
I would agree, being someone who lives in Montana right around Yellowstone, but there would actually be a lot of warning signs from Yellowstone decades before it would actually erupt. Additionally, not all of Yellowstones eruptions are super eruptions. It has had roughly three super eruptions, but dozens of smaller, much less terrifying eruptions too.
In addition to the rainfall, we had an unusually late, very heavy snowfall in April. We had about 2-3 feet here in Billings, and I'm sure a lot more in the mountains. That is also a contributing factor to this event. Normally, we get an inch or two here or there. This year, it was almost a week of wintery weather, with the first two days, heavy blizzards and most of that snow. The late, cooler temperatures, kept most of the snow frozen longer than normal. So when the rain happened, it all melted at once, rather than slowly, over March, April, and May. It's like when you defrost a freezer with ice build up. You get a lot more water than you expect.
most of that snow fall was probaly trigged by the volcanic erruption in Jan 2022 out in the Pacific ocean. am sure the ash is still affectingvweather patterns.
@@marypatten9655 That's a good point, and very likely. We had about an inch of ash here when Mt. St. Helens erupted. (according to my parents, I was 1).
The highest water level recorded on the Yellowstone River was in the 1990s with a flow of 31,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). That Sunday night the river hovered at 51,000 cfs. For comparison; the river has a typical average flow around 5,000 cfs. That’s a lot of water!
i live in billings mt, live a few blocks from the river, billings itself stayed mostly dry, but many other communities got it far worse, billings came close, the billings water plant had to shut down its intake for 24 hours, as the river had risen past its safety range, and it was scary close to overtopping the banks near me, many of the houses near the riverbank had thier sump pumps trying their best to remove the water that was seeping into their basements.
Love your content. I'm a FW engineer, but love to get into the physical nitty gritty fidley bits. You narrate very well and your editing is top notch. Much appreciated
@@keithrange4457 ah okay. Same here. I do hardware, software, and firmware design. I think it would be fun to build robots for companies or something. I did some of that in college and in my free time, but the pay is pretty low compared to software engineering so it's better as a hobby haha
Here in Australia we have had 4 Major floods in the past 3 years. The Grose River, near where I live, rose 17 meters above the average river level and caused widespread destruction further downstream. The power of water is exciting and terrifying!
What made this flood so horrible is that much of Montana and Yellowstone had one of their coldest and snowiest springs on record this year. Then the weather suddenly switched to fairly typical summertime thunderstorms for June that dropped very heavy rain on a historically deep spring snowpack. It was just a perfect recipe for a bad flood where everything came to together to make for a particularly dangerous and devastating set of circumstances. It’s also nothing short of a miracle that no one was killed in these floods!
I live around Bozeman and I remember that the day before the Yellowstone flooded catastrophically we went hiking up gallatin canyon. When we were driving up and down the canyon we remarked at how crazy high the water was in the gallatin (this river also experienced a lot of flooding: it recurved the water from those westernly blobs of heavy rain fall). We had never seen flooding like that. The next day we drove back into the canyon to see the high water. It had overtopped a roughly 9 foot tall rock that is locally known as house rock. We’ve never, ever seen anything like that and probably won’t again in our lives. I think it’s also important to bring up that several towns that are farther from the park we’re also dramatically impacted, mainly Livingston and Red Lodge. Extensive flooding occurred in these towns as well.
We visited last year and were not surprised at the damage caused by these relatively minor stage increases. The soils are dominated by volcanic ash which turns into slurry quite quickly when exposed to rapidly moving water.
I’m the helicopter pilot for the park and this was suuuch a mess. But thanks to the great team and management we have there really helped everything out!
My family just visited there last summer! It was amazing and beautiful! Everything I dreamed it would be! I hope they can restore the park and roadways soon so that people can go back to enjoying the splendor of Yellowstone!
from what i can recall of my visit, "not much"! it's very common for them to need to adjust the routes of paths around springs and geysers, as the landscape is always changing and a new pool could bubble up just about anywhere. some of these paths are a lot more temporary than they look!
to add to what the previous two said, they lay a wooden platform directly on the surface of the material, and then put the structure of the path onto the platform. so it's just resting on the surface, and not really anchored to anything at all.
I heard about the flooding as it happened via the fishing community. It's interesting to hear different communities talk about the same events. Gives a neat perspective.
it'd be interesting to know how the subterranean water flow ends up affecting different areas of the park. is it possible it could carve a new path into or out of a geothermally sensitive area, tipping over a domino effect of sorts? that'd be really interesting to learn about
I was surprised at how "low" these flood levels, and the rainfall causing them were. Worst flood I ever saw was on the Sabie River in South Africa. It's fed by a small high rainfall area (up to 2000 mm per annum in spots), but even lower down there was a huge amount of rain that year (2001, I think). How much. 1000 mm in one week. Not a typo. A yard of rain in a week, to put it in Imperial terms. I know there were places downstream where the river rose up to 10 meters above normal (and this, over some of the flattest land on Earth, so this water flooded hundreds of square kilometers for a while, down in Mozambique. I think already by Skukuza in the Kruger National Park the level was already 6 m. (There's a marker there that shows the high water mark). My brother had just had a deep ripper in to prepare for holes for irrigation pipes down a steep hill. There's still quite a deep "gully" (what we call a "donga") there, to this day. The river roared, and a lot of very big, very old trees in the riverine forest were washed away. I don't know how deep it was running, but it had to be at least 3 or 4 meters, maybe more. (I'm trying not to exaggerate.) The truly amazing thing is how quickly Nature recovered. If you go down to the river today, you'd have to be a bit of a river detective to see there was such a huge flood. Kruger didn't have to do much in the way of bridge repair. They have low level bridges over the Sabie, and these just get flooded when there's heavy rain. Dig them out afterwards, and they're ready to go again. This more minimal approach to nature reserve bridges might be an option to look into. (And send any road whose embankment was eaten away for a little excursion up and down the hill, in from the river, maybe? It's a nature reserve. No need to be floating smoothly on level asphalt everywhere. Let the roads go up and down?) These floods are not the worst I lived through. Cyclone Domoina came south one year and showed us what real rain was like when we were kids. It stripped the topsoil, the undersoil, and some of the bedrock of the overgrazed areas away. To this day there are places where there's no soil, just rock - with the occasional crack Life finds a way into. Makes me wonder how people who get hit by something like that every year manage to cope.
The US is a friggen huge place, im doing a road trip across it right now with some friends. Whole mountain ranges the size of entire european countries feed river systems that reach as far as the pacific northwest to the Mississippi. Rivers that are effectively thousands of miles long if they werent constantly feeding into another on their way to the pacific or atlantic. Amazing honestly
@@sunburstbike It's one of those silly things someone worked out because 'an area the size of Wales' is often used to illustrate something. So I just grabbed it from the web. To be honest I'm beginning to wonder how accurate it is.
i live in one of the said communities that depend on Yellowstone's tourists this summer was incredibly slow as a whole. it's a relief that no one in the park got injured but man those following days were not fun to watch.
The story of the reintroduced wolves that changed Yellowstone rivers (look it up) is highly relevant. The wolves moved the grazing Wapiti from the river banks high up onto the surrounding ridges. Erosion at river level was reduced, but never mentioned was the effect of Wapiti grazing on the treeline causing much higher erosion and runoff there instead.
Reintroducing wolves didn't just move elk grazing; it helped break up the unnaturally large herds that had formed, which helps prevent overgrazing of any given form of vegetation in any one spot, which benefits all the animals that use that vegetation too. They also help stabilize elk populations, instead of larger swings between overpopulation and dying off, and this also benefits all the animals that make use of the regularity of dead elk remains. All changes from the wolves are just bringing the landscape back closer to the state that all the animals and plants in the area of the park evolved to function well in; if more erosion higher up _is_ a result, that just means erosion higher up was unnaturally low.
First time watching your videos. Really nice effort as to imagery, graphics, script, and your voice. Most engineers are poor communicators! I'm painfully aware of this with 40+ years as a civil engineer in water resources & flooding, along with 14 years in Engineers Without Borders.
The sad truth is that in reality, it won't be rebuilt to the the level it previously was. Many structures and amenities were New Deal era projects, and our country has lost its interest in the funding of those types of projects. If 1 party put forward a bill to fund it, the other party wouldn't want to "give them a win" in the eyes of the population and would vote down the bill.
Actually the problem is that within the government (and without) there is a powerful faction that specifically seeks to forbid people entry into Yellowstone and other similar places. They reject "for the benefit and enjoyment of the People" as a principle. Congress is for the most part going to be tripping over themselves to approve funding. The anti-humans however are going to be where reconstruction is stalled through lawfare. Every single contract will be subjected to environmental lawsuits to delay and deny reconstruction.
I'm not sure you understand what was damaged inside the park. It was mostly the roads in the two northern entrance roads. The only building damaged was the dorm that fell into the river. Most of the closures of the hotels and restaurants around the park was due to the overwhelmed septic systems, which made human habitation questionable, not because of the flooding itself. (i.e. no damage to the buildings.) All of that has already been fixed. The park will eventually be fine...
@@dorvinion Considering the debacle that just happened in the last year at that dinosaur footsteps park in... montana? Where the contractors drove their heavy machinery over the fossilized footprints, I'm fine with a little oversight on some of these projects, lest the humans do what they do best and destroy through carelessness.
I think they might be rebuilt, after all Yellowstone will want the tourists back, but it'll probably have to look for alternative funding sources. We may see an increase in park fees for entry and campsites to fund the reconstruction.
@@lord6617 There is a difference between oversight and what these people do. I'm not joking when I say they would be quite happy that none of it be rebuilt and they will do their best via repeat, nuisance lawsuits to see that be the result. They would if they could have their way, forbid people from entering Yellowstone at all.
Grady I am a surveyor for the construction company that you featured in your video. I have spent days surveying the ground and building topographic maps. Planning alignments and pioneering roadways along the Gardiner river.
Why are all those charts cut off at the bottom, and don't start with a zero baseline ?... This causes a skewed view of stats, and is notoriously unscientific.
I remember in BC rainfall raised the water levels so high it washed out bridges and remodeled the path of the river, even brought so much debree too. It was chaos, being that the 4 highways coming out of Vancouver, BC (pop. 2.8 million), were all closed due to washouts, mudslides, and bridges collapsing. Where I live in BC (not lower mainland), our cafeteria had to be closed due to no supplies being able to be brought from the sea, and classes had to be cancelled because teachers were stuck in Vancouver, unless you took a flight out. Surprisingly, they were able to reopen the highways really fast (it took about 5 weeks), even though multiple bridges had been completely wiped away, and segments of highway completely gone.
One way to help understand the whole "[x] year flood" thing is to use the analogy of rolling a set of dice. Only 3% of the time, a double 1 will be rolled. However if you roll those dice 1,000 times, you are fairly likely to roll a double 1 a few times immediately in a row rather than only once every ~33 rolls. Over the long term, it works out to once in every ~33, but for each set of 33 rolls, you will actually see a lot of times where you get none at all or multiple in that set.
I liked the argument that floods are a part of the nature that parks like these seek to protect, though there's a interesting discussion to be had if the severity of those floods could be considered natural, in that human activity has made them more severe than they would be otherwise
its a large untouched mountain region how would we have made it worse? did climate change do it? cuz the way i understand is that increased flooding do to climate change is a coastal phenomenon not 1000 miles inland
Humans are just a tiny blip in this universe. Nature is forever. There is nothing that humans can do that will actually "destroy nature." Once we are long gone, even if we cover the entire earth on concrete and plastic, nature will quickly reclaim in. We're not "protecting nature," nature does not need protecting. We are protecting aspects of nature that we happen to enjoy, sometimes from ourselves and other times from nature itself.
@@Backroad_Junkie it is a fact that extreme weather has become relevant more and more, and it is a fact that this is linked to human activity. Discussing this is essential to maintain the infrastructure that keeps society goings.
“Recovery” from this disaster will present a major challenge to ethics in engineering and conservation. It may seem like the obvious answer is to repair the damaged infrastructure, to restore public access to the park, but on the environmental and conservation side, is it appropriate to reverse or undo the natural geographic change to a national park? A protected area of land that by definition should be conserved.
Without public attention from visits the funding will quickly dry up, and frankly what's the point to demand taxpayer support for a place that is inaccessible for the people to appreciate?
Repairing the damage would be the stupidest thing to do, so that's probably what will happen. Building roads on sedimentary gravel beside a snow melt waterway is a ticking time bomb. Much of that damage hasn't finished happening, and anything not shored up will be vulnerable to further settling, especially when it rains. Some of those cuts are too steep to be stable for long, the first heavy rain will probably see slippage. You know the old parables about building houses on sand? It's even worse building roads on gravel by a river.
Thank you for this video, I don't have TV or any service but I do try to watch some local news, or NPR on the radio. This was informative for me. And thank you for the job/ career lead.
Of course, the problem with seeing incidents like this as "X-year" occurrences is that historical data is less and less accurate these days, when every summer is the "hottest summer on record".
Well the fact that our data doesn't go back far enough to accurately identify patterns is the real problem. "Hottest year on record" is a hilarious thing to say when you remember that the record is younger than the US.
@@xenn4985 Umm, not really. *Detailed* records only go back a few hundred years, but that's nowhere near to our limit of understanding. We have a pretty good idea what average global temperatures were at least half a million years prior to now, if not longer. And even then, the fact that each successive year recently is the "hottest on record" is still a considerable cause for concern, and will continue to be so until such time that we detect a slowdown or reversal of the current trend. (Something that almost definitely isn't going to happen in either of our lifetimes.)
@@-_James_- exactly, things like icecores from Antartica and Greenland contain trapped gases which reveal atmospheric composition for several thousand years, along with heavy:light water ratios which can be used to determine precipitation patterns that indicate global temperatures. This is only one data source of the hundreds of ways we can get direct measurements of the past that let us infer more useful data like global temperatures or rainfall patterns. One thing that is clear is that for better or worse humans are changing the climate. (Its mostly for the worse, very few areas have the benefits of climate change outweigh the costs)
@@xenn4985 Our data absolutely does go back far enough to accurately identify patterns, both short- and long-term. Ice core records show we've got CO2 levels now that are about 33% higher than any time in the past _800,000 years_ . 4 degrees C colder than current 'average' meant ice sheets over much of North America; we've already warmed things 1 degree _over_ that average and we're well on our way to making that +4 in a hundred years. The amount of change this will cause to the earth is hard to overstate, and yet impossible to predict the details of; we only know it will be bad, and costly.
@@IstasPumaNevada I like how you think those numbers go back far enough, to the point where you're willing to make judgement calls based on them. The only thing thats going to get worse is your hubris.
Thank you, Practical Engineering / Grady and I love your channel and all of the various Engineering topics that you present. Always so fascinating and refreshing. Thank you!
i went to yellowstone last week. nothing much was really closed other than the north entrance. It was still really beautiful and I didn't see any flooding in the areas that we went in
Thanks for yet another fascinating video. As a kid, I always wanted to be a civil engineer, but it turned out I didn't have the maths to do engineering (of any sort!). Watching your video reignites that passion.
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Super pumped for the book!
Id' quickly say, now that they had a disaster of huge proportions, nature made them the necessary infrastructure placement for the next one! Add some human knowledge and ingenuity to correct places and there you go, no fuss when next similiar incident happens.
It's really rare to see a sponsor that is actually doing something good. Thanks I will start using the site.
the volume difference between your speech and your outro is to big, it was suddenly so loud when you stopped speaking.
I appreciate that your crew is credited in the outro 👍
My Dad is an engineer. Growing up, we had a whiteboard in the dining room where he could illustrate the cool projects he was working on while we ate dinner. He specialized in dams, but did side projects, too. The dam work was physically very challenging: he had to be rope certified since he was rappelling down and in some cases inside of these gigantic structures, sometimes with lots of equipment. I love your videos because they remind me of those dinner time conversations.
Your dad sounds very cool
The dam work.
That's a dam fine dad.
Hot dam!
Wow ! This method of teaching the younger generation is so inspiring.
I’m a park employee in Yellowstone. I was never evacuated from the park so I got to experience the rare sight of a nearly empty Yellowstone during the summer. As a temporary measure the old Gardiner road, a stagecoach route that had been used as a one-way scenic route and bike path for many years has been expanded and is already in use for employees and tour groups from Gardiner mt. It’s convenient because it’s an already set path that has been surveyed and it doesn’t follow the course of the river so there’s less chance of further collapse. Communities on the northeast entrance of the park require quick fixes to the roads because otherwise, they are trapped, as the Beartooth pass, the only other way out besides the park roads closes in the winter.
I really miss camping, fishing, and hiking the weekends in the park back in the 80's. It was never overcrowded like it is now. We could ride the roads and hardly see much traffic at all, even during peak times. I lived a few hour drive from the park, and would pack up the motorcycle with camping gear on the weekends and head into the park
Jesus Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead, and gives salvation to everyone who has faith in him. True faith in Jesus will have you bear good fruit and *drastically* change for the better! Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness.
God is three in one; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him!
As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE!
Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals!
The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil. I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God.
Hey thanks for everything you do out there. 4" of rain alone in a day had to be wild, never mind dealing with the damage.
Guessing the pass is just too snowy in winter to keep plowed even in a pinch like what they have now.
As a Montanan, I appreciate you covering this. There were quite a few people complaining that their "Vacation was ruined", not realizing the extent of the damage that was done. I have friends of friends that were affected by these huge floods, and it's nice to see such a well put together explanation of what happened. I appreciate the work and detail you put into your videos!!
You can't blame them for complaining, as long as they're giving credit to Mother Nature for doing it. She ruins a lot of things without advanced notice! (They understand you're dilemma too--I'm sure. (at least I HOPE they do...))
It's scary how people are so focused on themselves. They come to an area where people just faced a natural disaster, lost a lot of their infrastructure and probably face lots of damage to their properties and belongings and they are most worried about their vacation not being as great as they expected.
Like as if you would go to a party only to find out that your friends house where the party was planned just burned down and you complain about the fact that you now don't have a party.
@@nobody7817 How empathetic of you.
You'll always have people like that. Don't put any effort into caring what they say.
@@nobody7817 you might be shocked to know most people are self centered and especially if they're complaining about their vacation being ruined, they aren't being empathetic to the ones who were seriously affected.
My family and I just returned from Yellowstone less than 24 hours ago. The repairs and associated reopening of the park is a direct testament to the engineers and contractors working this project. The northern routes were closed for repair and I am glad as the communities in the north border area rely upon these routes for not only tourism but daily life. My hat is off to everyone working hard to restore services to this gem of a national park. As always, an excellent presentation, Grady.
I hope you weren't like these fools in this vid, thinking Yellowstone is a petting zoo.
Being someone from Wales, the size comparrison was really useful!
i thought the same, it really hard to scale the US, especially its interior but Bangor to Aberystwyth, that i can visualise
I laughed at it then realised it did actually help me understand the scale a lot better
Came to say the same thing lol, surprisingly helpful unit of measurement
Grady, "For those accustomed to the metric system..."
@E Van what are you on? We're not some dictatorship (despite the best atempts of our Conservative government).
Everytime I see some of the "great outdoors" places you have in the US like in Montana, oregon, etc. I always get a sense of wonder
I get why activities like camping, hunting, road tripping are so popular in the US, your landscapes are GORGEOUS !
Arizona too, half the state is desert with tall granite mountains, the northern half is pine trees.
Thank you, yes, we are so fortunate to have such a huge variety of beautiful natural places in this country. I live for the “road trip” in the Western US, there are so many wonderful places and the distances are so vast, no one can possibly see them all. With my family, as a child, we took a trip from San Francisco across the southwest. I gave me my love of the wild outdoors and geology, so I became a geologist when I grew up.
Exactly , even our backyards are awesome. I took a road trip yesterday to Northern New Hampshire to see the foliage. You see waterfalls from the roadway. Lots of people everywhere camping , hiking , playing golf in one of the most beautiful remote regions of USA. Only took me 2.5 hours from my home in the suburbs
Montana is very beautiful and the same goes for Alaska. 😅
Hunting doesn't really belong on this list. Hunting is just something you can do while camping. But it's still the camping trip that's allowing you to see the natural beauty. Hunting doesn't add anything to that.
I was at Yellowstone a few weeks ago and while at Mammoth I had the opportunity to talk to an Army Corp of Engineers Ranger who was there as part of a large deployment working on the recovery.
One interesting detail is that the services at Mammoth were at an absolute minimum and the reason is that the fresh water and sewage systems can’t handle all the staff and over night guests, but can handle day use.
I don't think most people realize that across the road from the Mammoth campground there is an entire small neighborhood where a lot of the rangers and staff live.
That's super interesting...! It really shows just how complex and deep the considerations have to be in such projects. I would have never guessed that fresh water would be an issue to all those people, but it makes so much sense.
Jesus Christ died for our sins, rose from the dead, and gives salvation to everyone who has faith in him. True faith in Jesus will have you bear good fruit and *drastically* change for the better! Those led by the Holy Spirit do not abide in wickedness.
God is three in one; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! Bless him!
As I am led by the Holy Spirit, nothing I state is a lie, but the truth of God. Anyone who tells you differently is misinformed or a liar. They do not know God, nor led by him.
When you trust in God and cast your cares (worries, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts) upon him, they will be NO MORE!
Know that there is power in the name Jesus Christ! His name casts out demons and heals!
The world is wicked, evil, and of the devil. I too, was a wicked sinner of the world before I opened my heart to God. I am living proof of God's work and fruitfulness! He is an active God who hears the prayers of his! God's children are set apart (holy) and righteous. The devil is a liar that comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy; that includes your relationship with God.
Your lives are much more important than keeping video/comment relevancy.
Headed there shortly for a TON! of testing for DOT and Structural steel inspections. Its gonna be a long season. Wish all of us engineers and the workers luck!
The USGS river gauge network and the fact that the data is all publicly accessible is such an incredible resource
I was at Yellowstone less than a month before this event (right at the end of pre-season). It was amazing experiencing winter, spring, or summer just by driving only a few miles from where I had just been, and in a place with such awe inspiring terrain. One day I was in snowfall as deep as my hips, and just 15 minutes later was in a completely different climate wearing only a t shirt and shorts
Where are the videos tho
@Ailsa Ni Meant to reply to someone else? I don't make videos
Same here. Two very hot days, followed by a rainy day, then snow fell. Got lucky and got to go I to the Lamar Valley for the single day it opened 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
@@hyperspeed1313 they were suggesting that you should post some videos from your trip because it sounds cool. Come on, keep up...
Anyways, we call that SoCal weather here in... well, SoCal 😅
I work for the U.S. Geological Survey and it’s awesome getting to see our data being used!
Your data is the bees knees. I've use GIS data for personal projects any time I need geographic data. It's easy to access and use. One of the great public goods in this country.
So cheers, your job is super helpful to millions of people.
Look out guys the feds are here...
haha sorry thats an Orlando Jones quote from evolution when he uses his USGS digest I.D. to get access to the meteor
popped into my head for some reason
@@drunkpaulocosta everyone knows the most scary agency is the US Geological Survey
@@drunkpaulocosta that was a great movie! Lol unfortunately I would get rolled up so fast acting like I have any authority haha.
In many ways im a simple man; I see practical engineering I watch and give a thumbs up
I've visited yellowstone from europe just one day before the big rainfall. My plan was actually to be there 2 days later but my road trip turned up to be a bit faster than i thought. I guess i am really lucky that i could see the beauty of the park before this big rainstorm. Sad to see how destructive it was. I didn't know it happened untill 2 days later when i was talking to some local people in Cody WY.
My first time to Yellowstone National Park and it flooded, at first I thought it was normal, no signs of people getting evacuated until we were told to start heading out later that day by park rangers. Never underestimate the power of nature. Unforgettable experience
Fantastic video
The 80,000 hours thing is interesting to me. I've been retired almost 3 years and the one thing that has surprised me most is the amount of time I now have versus when I was working.
The 80,000 hours, by the way, doesn't include"
commute time
work prep time (washing work clothes, making sure other life people/events are taken care of while you are away at work)
Worrying about what's going on at work
I'm glad there's a non profit out there trying to help people select the best career for them.
You always hear people say "pick a job you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life". I've always said that saying is technically true but is mostly BS because most of us wind up having to "take" the first opportunity that presents itself due to economic necessity. (being broke).
interesting. most retirees I talk to wonder how they ever managed to find 40 hours a week to go to work.
@@kenbrown2808 I guess I'm just a totally boring individual.
@@martinparmer i hear good things about boredom. I think I'd like to try it sometime.
When youre working your free time is like a 5-6 hour chunk. Life flies by. I did 5 years working 100 hours a week, felt like a blink. I had to quit and go see the world.
@@0xsergy really? 100 hours a week? the most I've ever managed to sustain was 84 hours a week. for a month at a time.
I love your videos man. You give us normies a more detailed (but still consumable and understandable) explanation of what's going on with all the things you talk about.
Definitely in my top 10 educational channels I watch. Especially when it comes to civil engineering.
Keep up the good work, it's appreciated!
It's not just a matter of tourism for some towns. Cooke City, and Silver Gate, MT in the winter are completely dependent on the northern route through the park to Gardiner for food, fuel, medical support, and their children's schooling once the Beartooth Pass closes for winter due to the extreme conditions there. They only have a few weeks until Red Lodge, MT and Cody, WY become completely inaccessible. Without an emergency road, those towns will have to be abandoned barring some sort of Berlin Airlift level of resupply unless they can manage to keep the Beartooth Highway open up to at least the Chief Joseph back to Cody.
That is true, but like practical engineering said, hasty repairs can damage the park or create more work for a long term road reconstruction. Those communities will be affected, but it is arguably a good trade off. I’m sure a good solution can be found anyway
@@colatf2 Affected isn't the word, more like destroyed would be more appropriate. Without the road they'll starve this winter.
So, as someone who has never visited that area, why aren't there other easily accessible roads in and out of those towns? Does it have to do with running through the national park itself (unless I'm mistaken about there being very heavy regulations on where you can/can't build roads and such)? Is the geography such that those two roads are the only viable constructs, logistically and financially?
Like I said, I don't live there, nor have I ever been to Yellowstone (though I probly should once in my lifetime), so "Build more roads" sounds like a perfectly logical statement to make to me without any context.
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@@currentsitguy What's a few dead people as long as the park stays pretty?
This video got me thinking about the beach erosion we experience around the county. Specifically, the Outer Banks in North Carolina has changing sands from currents and storms and beaches that need to be repaired. It would be really neat to see a video about beach nourishment efforts and how they pump sand from the sea onto the islands to help with catastrophic storms. Keep up the awesome work!!
I'd be interested in learning more about beach erosion as well.
LOL! Why are there catastrophic storms?
@@Anon_E_Muss Beach erosion? That's what a beach is! It's the result of erosion. Good grief!
Another great video, Grady! I'm happy to announce that after watching your 100-year flood video (repeatedly, until it stuck) I was able to understand what you mean by a 500-year flood, and even figured out the 0.2% chance in my head before you said it. You are an excellent teacher!
Grady, I know a lot of people won’t care because it’s a small community in east Kentucky, but we received over 11 inches of rain in a few hours, totally devastating the place. Would like to hear your input on some of the causes of the massive flooding here
I find that interesting. However, if you want him to spend 10-30 hours researching it, you'd better sell it as a good video idea! 😊
Actually followed the sponsor for the first time ever, sounds like a cool idea. Good choice, a nonprofit is way better than the usual stuff other channels go for.
Hope you find something usefull for yourself there!
So much better than a dumb manscaping ad. Thank you!!
In Scotland, we had a similar rain storm in 2015 called “Storm Frank”. A 500 metre section of highway called the A93 was washed away due to river erosion between the villages of Ballater and Braemar, both in the Cairngorms national park.
And yet, they reopened the road 3 weeks later. They didn’t repair the road, they re-routed it a respectable distance away from the river bank! Ordinarily such a project would take years worth of planning, budget allocation, red tape etc….. but in times of emergency it’s interesting to see how quickly they can exercise compulsory purchase orders, make drawings for a new road and let contracts out to build that road. 7 years later, that re-routed road is permanent and has a condition / geometry that’s no worse than the previous section of road. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was one of the cheapest sections of new road to be built on a per mile basis in recent years.
And the Boscastle floods
As you can't fight erosion in these sort of circumstances, you just have to wok around it most of the time!
Probably cost the same, the difference was it was paid to the actual guys on the ground for a crazy amount of work in a short time, vs being paid to engineers to "value engineer" for 5 years.
As a rockhound, I wish I were able to see all the cool rocks that were washed down with the flooding.
Bet there is going to be some legendary finds coming out of there for the next few years.
Yeah, this is the time to watch for prospecting claims for sale along the rivers leaving the park...
Probably some cool fossils in those washes too
Along with remains of Indigenous Americans.
@@_MikeJon_ Not sure about fossils as how do fossils handle Caldera collapses? I can't imagine it being a gental process as the underlying rock crumbles under its own weight and overlying volcanic ejecta as it falls into the void left after the magma chamber underlying it partially emptied. Remember that Yellowstone park is primarily contained within 3 overlapping calderas from the volcanic complexes 3 most recent super eruptions over the last 3 million years, while some new younger fossils may have formed the collapse of the overlying rock as the magma chamber emptied out would have jumbled up much of the original terrain with volcanic ejecta. The subsequent refilling of the magma chambers and the flow of hydrothermal fluids and even magmatic intrusions into the crust would then also have led to widespread hydrothermal alternation thus metamorphosing the remaining rock. This is great conditions for the deposition of valuable mineral veins both from natural precipitation and microbial chemosynthetic activity but not so great for fossils that managed to survive the collapse brecciation process.
And since it seems it always comes up every time volcanism is mentioned in Yellowstone, in regards for concerns of future eruptions while they can't be ruled out for now it appears the two underlying magma chambers have largely crystalized thus barring fresh intrusions to reenergize the systems a major eruption doesn't seem likely any time soon. The current park thanks to tectonic drift is getting further away from the underlying Yellowstone hotspot thus fresh intrusions become les likely over time forcing much of the hot spots thermal output to be directed into melting a new outlet through the ancient North American craton Laurentia proper which appears to extend well below the surface of the crust into the mantle.
@@Dragrath1 interesting.
So, in a few K years, volcanoes in Idaho?
Glad no one was hurt, and I hope they're able to figure it out before too long; just noticed your channel logo behind you though, I'm not sure how long that's been there, but it's an amusing addition SuperVinlin
Using my country as a metric of measurement is a nice reminder that not everyone thinks we're just part of England.
?
isn't it just a glorified parcel for a royal title?
yes
@UCHF2PkQOVPitw0A-UMkUu4Q
Most Americans assume Wales is part of England. I would, too, but being part Welsh did some reading.
It's always an area the size of wales. Why does the size of wales seem to just fit so well as a measurement of disaster area?
We were THERE IN August ..that you for working so hard to open as much as you did for us..wow totally amazing place..and gorgeous beyond measure ❤️
When we were in Gardner in July, a shop owner said they agreed for a temporary upgrade of an old stage coach trail to restore northern access, and then 2-3 years for a new road. They can’t simply repair the old road because of the extensive damage, so they’ll have to do new routes. I hope the northern towns survive this.
With "extensive damage" you mean "the ground beneath where the road was ceased to exist", I guess?
@@HenryLoenwind Yeah, plus the ground that looks solid where the road still is is not stable anymore.
@@HenryLoenwindNot just the ground underneath but the mountainsides that the road ran against. Because of those landslides, they can't just simply fill-in the old areas; they would have to blast entire mountain sides to make space again.
@@christopherwarsh That area from Gardiner to Mammoth has mountainsides of some EXTREMELY loose rock, it's completely inevitable that many more landslides will happen onto that road. They are better off moving the main road from the riverside to the area of the old stagecoach road.
@@HenryLoenwind Oh, it still exists, it's just not there any more. It's off downstream somewhere.
Good thing it's not like the UK National Park Authority, who would probably require you to go get the original ground.
I am incredibly curious to see how the north entrance roads are dealt with. That north entrance and road from mammoth to livingston is the only route open to vehicles during the winter and on top of that the only way for those living & visiting cooke city to get in and out of town. I grew up in Bozeman, make yearly trips back home and down to Yellowstone still and was in shock seeing the road I frequent in the winter being washed away by the floods. Thanks for covering this, especially for those who are having to live through it.
We had a similar incident last year with an "atmospheric river" that hit BC with an unprecedented amount of rainfall twice in two weeks, and as a result, sections of the Coquihala Highway (which connects the Vancouver area to the interior of the province) were washed away. Looking at the damage in videos, I thought for sure it would be years before the highway is restored, but it reopened mere weeks later (albeit in minimal capacity, simply to restore the critical link), thanks to amazing engineering and construction teams. I drove it for the first time since the flooding last weekend, and while it's still not back to 100%, it's amazing to see both the damage and the rebuilding.
thanks to Highway Through Hell, a lot of us are familiar with the Coq. back around the turn of the century, we had two hundred year floods in close succession. the second one either washed out or inundated every possible road out of my hometown.
There's an atmospheric river hitting New Zealand at the moment, potentially 800mm of rain forecast for some areas
Yeah, that was wild how fast they got traffic flowing again!
Same in New Zealand. I mean, we usually have PNW levels of rain here, but this year has been atmospheric rivers, one after another and I can't remember another like it. We're on the east coast rain shadow side, but my family on the west of the SI have been hammered.
@@whiteb09 Yikes! Batten down the hatches and good luck! ☂️
This has been the most complete examination I’ve seen to date. Thanks Grady, you da man.
Your video's are always so well produced, and really well done again! Thanks for all the great info!
Hmm so you have seen the first 3 min
Videos* not video's
A lot of those roads, bridges, walkways and stuff in Yellowstone my dad helped build. He was a trained carpenter. He was born in 1898, and was 50bwhen i was born. It was during the Great Depression. And part of the WPA was building roads, walks, fences bridges etc. My dad was one of many local workers who were employed there.
It was due to his extensive work in Yellowstone including a lot of out of the way locations that we, as kids, got to visit a lot of those features. I grew up primarily in Madison and Gallatin counties in Montana, although for the few years we lived near Anaconda while my dad worked at the old smelter there was a break in that.
As kids even after he died we had so many Sunday picnics in Yellowstone that we couldn't keep count.
I work at the Army Corps of Engineers and we were going to put together a team to aid in flood fighting but the flood ended so fast there ended up being no reason to send anyone.
It's now up to the local engineers to work on repairs. But who knows, they might need aid from our office. This bomb cyclone was quite similar to the flooding of the Missouri river basin of 2019
We sent someone from Omaha District to help, though I think he mostly worked on rehabilitation than any flood fighting
I last went to Yellowstone, Cody Wyoming, & Idaho since July & August, 2015!
I see something that like this on news and take everything with a grain of salt. Those newscasters often get details wrong and don’t understand much of anything. Then, I watch a video like this from you and get the real story. Thanks!
I was working in cooke city MT, just outside the northeast entrance when the floods hit. I was eventually forced to leave in find work elsewhere because there wasn’t enough traffic. Love to see the coverage on this event
I remember we were going to head through Yellowstone to get to our home in Idaho. At the time we didn’t realize the park was closed until we drove 2 hours to the entrance just to turn around and to go into Montana then get back into Idaho. It was sad we weren’t able to tell that there was flooding until we got to the entrance gate which was closed. I did see the Yellowstone River and I will say it was pretty high when I was driving through during the flooding.
Grady; you're one of those guys I'd like to sit next to at a bar for some smalll talk. I feel smarter every time I watch one of your videos. I'm not smarter, but I feel smarter for having listened to you for 20 minutes. Thank you for explaining complex subjects, and presenting them for the average working man.
I live way downstream in North Dakota on Lake Sakakawea and due to the long time drought while there was a giant influx of water, we hardly noticed it here. This whole system is fascinating. Thanks for doing a great job explaining it.
I really enjoyed this video. But what I found most helpful was your sponsor! I’ve been searching for a job for 2 years (I graduated with a environmental science degree) and am honestly extremely exhausted from my constant search. This sponsor has brought me a little hope that I will be able to find a job soon.
Great work. You make complex things/situations/events understandable. I've only watched two of your videos so far. This one and "What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?" And while I'm not ready to engineer a dam or reconstruct failed infrastructure, I have a better understanding of what happened at both events. It also has help me to understand that while we can do our best, sometimes there are things we can't see, didn't fully comprehend, and a host of other things can impact out endeavors. Another thing I learned, how cascade failure can be more than the total of the parts.
As an Architectural designer, I always find your subject matter informative. Good job Grady. Several years ago I rode my motorcycle from southern Colorado to Yellowstone. I camped first in the Tetons, explored the park then into Montana, back into the north end and exited west into into Idaho.
500 milli-wales. great to see proper units in use.
LOL!!
Thank you for all the metric measurements, made it a lot more enjoyable to watch
As someone from Wales that comparison was very informative. Thanks! :D On a side note, there is one natural disaster that could happen in Yellowstone that nobody on Earth would avoid being impacted by, but hopefully that caldera will remain dormant for time to come.
The Cauldera is only at 15% fullness so there is no need to worry about it for the next several hundred years, despite what some fear mongering tabloids or Hollywood movies say.
I would agree, being someone who lives in Montana right around Yellowstone, but there would actually be a lot of warning signs from Yellowstone decades before it would actually erupt. Additionally, not all of Yellowstones eruptions are super eruptions. It has had roughly three super eruptions, but dozens of smaller, much less terrifying eruptions too.
I’m in Red Lodge MT, cool to see we made your video!! The flooding was just unbelievable
Hello from a country twice the size of Yellowstone!
In addition to the rainfall, we had an unusually late, very heavy snowfall in April. We had about 2-3 feet here in Billings, and I'm sure a lot more in the mountains. That is also a contributing factor to this event. Normally, we get an inch or two here or there. This year, it was almost a week of wintery weather, with the first two days, heavy blizzards and most of that snow. The late, cooler temperatures, kept most of the snow frozen longer than normal. So when the rain happened, it all melted at once, rather than slowly, over March, April, and May. It's like when you defrost a freezer with ice build up. You get a lot more water than you expect.
most of that snow fall was probaly trigged by the volcanic erruption in Jan 2022 out in the Pacific ocean. am sure the ash is still affectingvweather patterns.
@@marypatten9655 That's a good point, and very likely. We had about an inch of ash here when Mt. St. Helens erupted. (according to my parents, I was 1).
The highest water level recorded on the Yellowstone River was in the 1990s with a flow of 31,000 cubic feet per second (cfs). That Sunday night the river hovered at 51,000 cfs. For comparison; the river has a typical average flow around 5,000 cfs. That’s a lot of water!
i live in billings mt, live a few blocks from the river, billings itself stayed mostly dry, but many other communities got it far worse, billings came close, the billings water plant had to shut down its intake for 24 hours, as the river had risen past its safety range, and it was scary close to overtopping the banks near me, many of the houses near the riverbank had thier sump pumps trying their best to remove the water that was seeping into their basements.
Let's take a moment to appreciate the inches and meters! Thanks for explaining in both languages. :)
im preparing to start my civil engineering degree next year and this channel has been a great source of information for me grady i must say!
Love your content. I'm a FW engineer, but love to get into the physical nitty gritty fidley bits. You narrate very well and your editing is top notch. Much appreciated
FW? Like firmware?
@@Eric-xh9ee yes firmware
@@keithrange4457 ah okay. Same here. I do hardware, software, and firmware design. I think it would be fun to build robots for companies or something. I did some of that in college and in my free time, but the pay is pretty low compared to software engineering so it's better as a hobby haha
Here in Australia we have had 4 Major floods in the past 3 years.
The Grose River, near where I live, rose 17 meters above the average river level and caused widespread destruction further downstream. The power of water is exciting and terrifying!
What made this flood so horrible is that much of Montana and Yellowstone had one of their coldest and snowiest springs on record this year. Then the weather suddenly switched to fairly typical summertime thunderstorms for June that dropped very heavy rain on a historically deep spring snowpack. It was just a perfect recipe for a bad flood where everything came to together to make for a particularly dangerous and devastating set of circumstances. It’s also nothing short of a miracle that no one was killed in these floods!
Props to the workers for making sure everyone was safe and keeping the park as accessible as possible 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 i love Yellowstone
I live around Bozeman and I remember that the day before the Yellowstone flooded catastrophically we went hiking up gallatin canyon. When we were driving up and down the canyon we remarked at how crazy high the water was in the gallatin (this river also experienced a lot of flooding: it recurved the water from those westernly blobs of heavy rain fall). We had never seen flooding like that. The next day we drove back into the canyon to see the high water. It had overtopped a roughly 9 foot tall rock that is locally known as house rock. We’ve never, ever seen anything like that and probably won’t again in our lives.
I think it’s also important to bring up that several towns that are farther from the park we’re also dramatically impacted, mainly Livingston and Red Lodge. Extensive flooding occurred in these towns as well.
Amazing video. By way of your graphics you did a better job of explaining Yellowstone and the floods than anyone else I've seen. Thank you!!
We visited last year and were not surprised at the damage caused by these relatively minor stage increases. The soils are dominated by volcanic ash which turns into slurry quite quickly when exposed to rapidly moving water.
I’m the helicopter pilot for the park and this was suuuch a mess. But thanks to the great team and management we have there really helped everything out!
Here's a protip: No one is familiar with Wales.
My family just visited there last summer! It was amazing and beautiful! Everything I dreamed it would be! I hope they can restore the park and roadways soon so that people can go back to enjoying the splendor of Yellowstone!
hey grady, how do you think they made that boardwalk next to the hot spring at 3:10? what did they anchor it to?
from what i can recall of my visit, "not much"! it's very common for them to need to adjust the routes of paths around springs and geysers, as the landscape is always changing and a new pool could bubble up just about anywhere. some of these paths are a lot more temporary than they look!
The posts holding the walkways are movable imagine its all like a free standing reorganizable boat dock
to add to what the previous two said, they lay a wooden platform directly on the surface of the material, and then put the structure of the path onto the platform. so it's just resting on the surface, and not really anchored to anything at all.
@@kenbrown2808 yup! Thanks I should have added about the bases of the pylons.
@@davidamoritz never been to yellowstone, i had assumed that ground is very soft and wouldn't be easy to build on...what a simple solution
I heard about the flooding as it happened via the fishing community. It's interesting to hear different communities talk about the same events. Gives a neat perspective.
it'd be interesting to know how the subterranean water flow ends up affecting different areas of the park. is it possible it could carve a new path into or out of a geothermally sensitive area, tipping over a domino effect of sorts? that'd be really interesting to learn about
🟥🔥👥️️👥️️👥️️🌋👥️️👥️️👥️️🔥🟥
I went to Yellowstone 3 weeks ago. It's amazing how quickly, and well, they've already made repairs.
notification squad!🔥🔥🔥
I guess I’m just lucky
Yep
Just floated it today. Pretty interesting hearing the guide talk about the power of the river and how much the channels changed
I was surprised at how "low" these flood levels, and the rainfall causing them were. Worst flood I ever saw was on the Sabie River in South Africa. It's fed by a small high rainfall area (up to 2000 mm per annum in spots), but even lower down there was a huge amount of rain that year (2001, I think). How much. 1000 mm in one week. Not a typo. A yard of rain in a week, to put it in Imperial terms. I know there were places downstream where the river rose up to 10 meters above normal (and this, over some of the flattest land on Earth, so this water flooded hundreds of square kilometers for a while, down in Mozambique. I think already by Skukuza in the Kruger National Park the level was already 6 m. (There's a marker there that shows the high water mark).
My brother had just had a deep ripper in to prepare for holes for irrigation pipes down a steep hill. There's still quite a deep "gully" (what we call a "donga") there, to this day. The river roared, and a lot of very big, very old trees in the riverine forest were washed away. I don't know how deep it was running, but it had to be at least 3 or 4 meters, maybe more. (I'm trying not to exaggerate.)
The truly amazing thing is how quickly Nature recovered. If you go down to the river today, you'd have to be a bit of a river detective to see there was such a huge flood.
Kruger didn't have to do much in the way of bridge repair. They have low level bridges over the Sabie, and these just get flooded when there's heavy rain. Dig them out afterwards, and they're ready to go again. This more minimal approach to nature reserve bridges might be an option to look into. (And send any road whose embankment was eaten away for a little excursion up and down the hill, in from the river, maybe? It's a nature reserve. No need to be floating smoothly on level asphalt everywhere. Let the roads go up and down?)
These floods are not the worst I lived through. Cyclone Domoina came south one year and showed us what real rain was like when we were kids. It stripped the topsoil, the undersoil, and some of the bedrock of the overgrazed areas away. To this day there are places where there's no soil, just rock - with the occasional crack Life finds a way into. Makes me wonder how people who get hit by something like that every year manage to cope.
The US is a friggen huge place, im doing a road trip across it right now with some friends. Whole mountain ranges the size of entire european countries feed river systems that reach as far as the pacific northwest to the Mississippi. Rivers that are effectively thousands of miles long if they werent constantly feeding into another on their way to the pacific or atlantic. Amazing honestly
Excellent, as always! Glad to know there are long-range thought processes way before construction! Thanks for a great video, be well and be safe!
An area half the size of Wales = 1 million Rugby pitches (roughly). Hope that helps.
Rugby, roughly: nice! 🤣😉✌🏼
How do you know this?
@@sunburstbike It's one of those silly things someone worked out because 'an area the size of Wales' is often used to illustrate something. So I just grabbed it from the web. To be honest I'm beginning to wonder how accurate it is.
i live in one of the said communities that depend on Yellowstone's tourists this summer was incredibly slow as a whole. it's a relief that no one in the park got injured but man those following days were not fun to watch.
The story of the reintroduced wolves that changed Yellowstone rivers (look it up) is highly relevant. The wolves moved the grazing Wapiti from the river banks high up onto the surrounding ridges. Erosion at river level was reduced, but never mentioned was the effect of Wapiti grazing on the treeline causing much higher erosion and runoff there instead.
Reintroducing wolves didn't just move elk grazing; it helped break up the unnaturally large herds that had formed, which helps prevent overgrazing of any given form of vegetation in any one spot, which benefits all the animals that use that vegetation too. They also help stabilize elk populations, instead of larger swings between overpopulation and dying off, and this also benefits all the animals that make use of the regularity of dead elk remains. All changes from the wolves are just bringing the landscape back closer to the state that all the animals and plants in the area of the park evolved to function well in; if more erosion higher up _is_ a result, that just means erosion higher up was unnaturally low.
First time watching your videos. Really nice effort as to imagery, graphics, script, and your voice. Most engineers are poor communicators! I'm painfully aware of this with 40+ years as a civil engineer in water resources & flooding, along with 14 years in Engineers Without Borders.
The sad truth is that in reality, it won't be rebuilt to the the level it previously was. Many structures and amenities were New Deal era projects, and our country has lost its interest in the funding of those types of projects. If 1 party put forward a bill to fund it, the other party wouldn't want to "give them a win" in the eyes of the population and would vote down the bill.
Actually the problem is that within the government (and without) there is a powerful faction that specifically seeks to forbid people entry into Yellowstone and other similar places.
They reject "for the benefit and enjoyment of the People" as a principle.
Congress is for the most part going to be tripping over themselves to approve funding. The anti-humans however are going to be where reconstruction is stalled through lawfare. Every single contract will be subjected to environmental lawsuits to delay and deny reconstruction.
I'm not sure you understand what was damaged inside the park.
It was mostly the roads in the two northern entrance roads.
The only building damaged was the dorm that fell into the river.
Most of the closures of the hotels and restaurants around the park was due to the overwhelmed septic systems, which made human habitation questionable, not because of the flooding itself. (i.e. no damage to the buildings.) All of that has already been fixed.
The park will eventually be fine...
@@dorvinion Considering the debacle that just happened in the last year at that dinosaur footsteps park in... montana? Where the contractors drove their heavy machinery over the fossilized footprints, I'm fine with a little oversight on some of these projects, lest the humans do what they do best and destroy through carelessness.
I think they might be rebuilt, after all Yellowstone will want the tourists back, but it'll probably have to look for alternative funding sources. We may see an increase in park fees for entry and campsites to fund the reconstruction.
@@lord6617 There is a difference between oversight and what these people do.
I'm not joking when I say they would be quite happy that none of it be rebuilt and they will do their best via repeat, nuisance lawsuits to see that be the result.
They would if they could have their way, forbid people from entering Yellowstone at all.
Grady I am a surveyor for the construction company that you featured in your video. I have spent days surveying the ground and building topographic maps. Planning alignments and pioneering roadways along the Gardiner river.
Why are all those charts cut off at the bottom, and don't start with a zero baseline ?...
This causes a skewed view of stats, and is notoriously unscientific.
Relative river heights is more than enough to show it was flood level.
I remember in BC rainfall raised the water levels so high it washed out bridges and remodeled the path of the river, even brought so much debree too. It was chaos, being that the 4 highways coming out of Vancouver, BC (pop. 2.8 million), were all closed due to washouts, mudslides, and bridges collapsing. Where I live in BC (not lower mainland), our cafeteria had to be closed due to no supplies being able to be brought from the sea, and classes had to be cancelled because teachers were stuck in Vancouver, unless you took a flight out.
Surprisingly, they were able to reopen the highways really fast (it took about 5 weeks), even though multiple bridges had been completely wiped away, and segments of highway completely gone.
One way to help understand the whole "[x] year flood" thing is to use the analogy of rolling a set of dice. Only 3% of the time, a double 1 will be rolled. However if you roll those dice 1,000 times, you are fairly likely to roll a double 1 a few times immediately in a row rather than only once every ~33 rolls. Over the long term, it works out to once in every ~33, but for each set of 33 rolls, you will actually see a lot of times where you get none at all or multiple in that set.
As a brit thanks for showing the rk next to Wales. I had no idea it was that big
I liked the argument that floods are a part of the nature that parks like these seek to protect, though there's a interesting discussion to be had if the severity of those floods could be considered natural, in that human activity has made them more severe than they would be otherwise
its a large untouched mountain region how would we have made it worse? did climate change do it? cuz the way i understand is that increased flooding do to climate change is a coastal phenomenon not 1000 miles inland
Humans are just a tiny blip in this universe. Nature is forever. There is nothing that humans can do that will actually "destroy nature." Once we are long gone, even if we cover the entire earth on concrete and plastic, nature will quickly reclaim in. We're not "protecting nature," nature does not need protecting. We are protecting aspects of nature that we happen to enjoy, sometimes from ourselves and other times from nature itself.
You make it sound nefarious.
A heavy thunderstorm fell on a snow pack that was about to starting to melt.
It was more bad timing than anything else...
"An interesting discussion" lmao
@@Backroad_Junkie it is a fact that extreme weather has become relevant more and more, and it is a fact that this is linked to human activity. Discussing this is essential to maintain the infrastructure that keeps society goings.
Thx for the metric comparison
“Recovery” from this disaster will present a major challenge to ethics in engineering and conservation.
It may seem like the obvious answer is to repair the damaged infrastructure, to restore public access to the park, but on the environmental and conservation side, is it appropriate to reverse or undo the natural geographic change to a national park? A protected area of land that by definition should be conserved.
Without public attention from visits the funding will quickly dry up, and frankly what's the point to demand taxpayer support for a place that is inaccessible for the people to appreciate?
Repairing the damage would be the stupidest thing to do, so that's probably what will happen.
Building roads on sedimentary gravel beside a snow melt waterway is a ticking time bomb. Much of that damage hasn't finished happening, and anything not shored up will be vulnerable to further settling, especially when it rains. Some of those cuts are too steep to be stable for long, the first heavy rain will probably see slippage.
You know the old parables about building houses on sand? It's even worse building roads on gravel by a river.
Thank you for this video, I don't have TV or any service but I do try to watch some local news, or NPR on the radio. This was informative for me. And thank you for the job/ career lead.
A "deluge" of tourists "stream in", you say
Felt like it was setting up a pun that never quite paid off!
I honestly find it refreshing that you tend to point out that regulations are things we put there for our own benefit.
Of course, the problem with seeing incidents like this as "X-year" occurrences is that historical data is less and less accurate these days, when every summer is the "hottest summer on record".
Well the fact that our data doesn't go back far enough to accurately identify patterns is the real problem. "Hottest year on record" is a hilarious thing to say when you remember that the record is younger than the US.
@@xenn4985 Umm, not really. *Detailed* records only go back a few hundred years, but that's nowhere near to our limit of understanding. We have a pretty good idea what average global temperatures were at least half a million years prior to now, if not longer. And even then, the fact that each successive year recently is the "hottest on record" is still a considerable cause for concern, and will continue to be so until such time that we detect a slowdown or reversal of the current trend. (Something that almost definitely isn't going to happen in either of our lifetimes.)
@@-_James_- exactly, things like icecores from Antartica and Greenland contain trapped gases which reveal atmospheric composition for several thousand years, along with heavy:light water ratios which can be used to determine precipitation patterns that indicate global temperatures. This is only one data source of the hundreds of ways we can get direct measurements of the past that let us infer more useful data like global temperatures or rainfall patterns.
One thing that is clear is that for better or worse humans are changing the climate. (Its mostly for the worse, very few areas have the benefits of climate change outweigh the costs)
@@xenn4985 Our data absolutely does go back far enough to accurately identify patterns, both short- and long-term.
Ice core records show we've got CO2 levels now that are about 33% higher than any time in the past _800,000 years_ .
4 degrees C colder than current 'average' meant ice sheets over much of North America; we've already warmed things 1 degree _over_ that average and we're well on our way to making that +4 in a hundred years. The amount of change this will cause to the earth is hard to overstate, and yet impossible to predict the details of; we only know it will be bad, and costly.
@@IstasPumaNevada I like how you think those numbers go back far enough, to the point where you're willing to make judgement calls based on them.
The only thing thats going to get worse is your hubris.
My family was on vacation in Yellowstone right when this happened. I kid you not that road washed away less than an hour after we left our hotel.
Is “Wales” a standard SI unit for area? 🤣
Thank you, Practical Engineering / Grady and I love your channel and all of the various Engineering topics that you present. Always so fascinating and refreshing. Thank you!
Thank you for this consise explanation! And yet again, beautiful transition into the sponsor segment at the end. Your care in scripting shows
I really enjoy your content! Have you considered longer format deep dives? I, for one, would watch them. Thanks for doing what you do.
I just wanted to say this is one of my favorite UA-cam channels :)
i went to yellowstone last week. nothing much was really closed other than the north entrance. It was still really beautiful and I didn't see any flooding in the areas that we went in
Thank you, Grady. Your channel is so easy to listen to and learn.
As someone who lives in North Wales, your size comparison was perfect, diolch!!
Just wanted to say thankyou for including a comparison for us metric folks!
Thanks for yet another fascinating video. As a kid, I always wanted to be a civil engineer, but it turned out I didn't have the maths to do engineering (of any sort!). Watching your video reignites that passion.
That scale reference for us metric folk was invaluable. Thank you