11 May 2026

Hydrologic Mechanisms for 2022 Yellowstone River Flood and Comparisons to Recent Historic Floods

Abstract: In June 2022, a historic flood event occurred in the headwaters of the Yellowstone River Basin. The flood resulted in millions of dollars in damages and substantial interruptions to Yellowstone National Park. The 2022 flood event was substantially higher in magnitude than other high- peak flow events over the last 30 years. The high discharge was primarily due to the combination of hydrologic mechanisms initiated by rain-on-snow, including a high- elevation snowpack that peaked later than average. However, the contributions of each hydrologic driver, rain and snow, have not been quantified and could be important for understanding future flood events in the region. The contribution of snowmelt to the total terrestrial water input (TWI) varied throughout the area, yet was concentrated in the headwaters of the Yellowstone, Stillwater, and Boulder rivers, along with the headwaters of Rock Creek in Wyoming and Montana. The primary atmospheric contributions to the TWI during the 2022 event were precipitation from moisture transported from the Pacific Ocean that converged over the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) and snowmelt from residual snowpack in the northeast part of Yellowstone National Park.

2 Apr 2026

Storylines for the 1997 New Year’s Flood: The role of Watershed Antecedent Conditions and Future Warming in Shaping Discharge in the Truckee River Watershed

Abstract: The 1997 New Year’s flood was among the most devastating floods in the Truckee River watershed located in western Nevada. This event resulted from complex interactions of flood drivers, such as extreme precipitation, wet antecedent watershed conditions, warm temperatures and rapid snowmelt. We leveraged simulated forcings from the regionally refined mesh capabilities of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (RRM-E3SM) and a process-based hydrological model to recreate the 1997 New Year’s flood for the Truckee River watershed across four climate warming levels ranging from the current temperatures to + 4◦ C. For each scenario, we conducted ensemble simulations with the same forcing but with 100 different seasonal watershed antecedent conditions, which were randomly sampled from long-term hydrological simulations. The results show that the 1997 New Year’s flood can be reproduced or exceeded consistently only when the antecedent watershed conditions are wet, specifically when streamflows are above the 75th percentile of the climatological value. There is negligible change in ensemble mean peakflows for Truckee River near Reno; however, there are increases of 18% and 14% under the warming levels of + 3◦ C and + 4◦ C, respectively. The increases in peakflows under future climate warming are attributed to wetter antecedent watershed conditions and enhanced snowmelt. Furthermore, the largest increases in peakflows occur at small, high-elevation headwater basins along the Sierra Nevada crest. This study highlights that changes in extreme flood events will result from the complex interplay of multiple flood drivers. It also demonstrates the potential of storyline approaches to analyze future realizations of these extreme events under different climate scenarios.