Before and After Photos Show Yosemite After Record Snowpack Melt

Photographs have captured Yosemite National Park in California as warming temperatures melt the record snowpack, leading to surging rivers and spectacular waterfalls.

Areas of the national park have closed in recent weeks as the Merced River, which runs through the park, begins to overflow. A May 5 statement from the park said the river had "peaked a few inches below flood stage."

California has been in a drought for years, and Yosemite National Park only floods during an exceptionally wet season. The park, covering nearly 1,200 square miles, is a major tourist attraction, drawing more than 3.3 million visitors in 2021, according to the National Park Service.

The latest pictures contrast with photos taken last July that showed an exceptionally dry Yosemite National Park in the days following wildfires.

Then during the winter months, Yosemite was pictured blanketed in snow during severe winter storms that hit the state. These storms continued throughout the winter, meaning record levels of snowpack accumulated.

Now, all that snowpack is all melting.

Photos taken recently show torrents of water descending in waterfalls, as the snowpack runoff increases.

A photograph shared by the Yosemite National Park also shows the Merced at very high levels.

A photograph taken at the end of April, when the first flood warnings were issued, shows a park ranger turning people away from certain areas of the park that were deemed unsafe.

The park has warned that floods could continue throughout the summer, into July, as there is still "a lot of snow to melt."

Snow surveys on May 1 showed levels were at 231 percent of average for the Merced River basin and 253 percent of average for the Tuolumne River basin, which flows for 149 miles through central California, from the high Sierra Nevada.

"River-related recreation, like rafting, swimming, and picnicking in picnic areas along the river, is likely to be unavailable until sometime in July even when Yosemite Valley is open," the Yosemite National Park said.

Although the high accumulation of snowpack was much needed to replenish the state's reservoirs and lakes—many of which were seeing extremely low water levels before the wet weather hit—the resulting floods can be hugely disruptive.

The hope with the snowpack was that it would melt gradually, slowly feeding into reservoirs and rivers, and avoiding flooding.

However at the end of April, the National Weather Service said the area was seeing "much warmer weather" than expected, which in turn would "accelerate snowmelt."

Towards the end of the wet weather at the end of March, the southern Sierra Nevada, which stretches from San Joaquin and Mono counties to Kern County, had a snowpack level 257 percent greater than average for this time of year, data from the California Department of Water Resources reported.

The Central Sierra and Northern Sierras also accumulated much higher snowpack levels, at 218 percent and 168 percent of the average for this time of the year, respectively.

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