From Drought To Deluge
South Central Montana
Written by Cyd Hoefle
Photographed by Stu Hoefle
It was business as usual at this year’s annual Home of Champion’s Rodeo weekend in Red Lodge. Record sales for vendors and sold-out seats made it hard to believe that less than a month earlier the mountain town had fought a historic flood. On June 13, the community began battling the raging Rock Creek, which had blown its banks at the south end of town. As it escaped its banks, it turned Broadway Avenue into a rocky river channel flooding everything in its path. Violently decimating homes and businesses, it left trees, debris, mud and boulders in its wake and had townsfolk, first responders, utility and construction crews working frantically to fill sandbags, build berms and dump loads of rock in an effort to redirect the currents and avoid as much damage as possible.
Rock Creek flows north out of the Beartooth Mountains to the east side of Red Lodge and continues north until it links up with the Clark’s Fork River near Silesia. On that fateful day in mid-June, multiple acts of nature partnered to culminate in what many would later call “historic flooding, reaching its highest level in 1,000 years.”
In a stark contrast, just one year ago Mount Maurice and several miles of the Beartooth Front burned due to man’s carelessness coupled with widespread drought. This year’s natural catastrophe was a drastic switch from drought to deluge.
In late March and April, appreciable amounts of snow fell on the greater Yellowstone area, then Memorial Day Weekend an unexpected snowstorm surprised early season campers forcing them to flee their campsites. Two weeks later, several days of rain melded with warm temperatures and snow melt sent a turbocharged torrent of runoff down the mountains.
According to National Weather Service statistics, the Beartooth and Absaroka Ranges received from 0.8 to over 5 inches of rain from June 10 through June 13, causing the equivalent of nearly 5 inches of snow melt. The two sources combined to create a forceful bombardment of 9 inches of runoff. Mountain brooks became raging creeks, creeks became rivers, and rivers expanded well beyond the means of their banks all within a matter of hours. Bridges were washed out, homes and businesses destroyed, irrigation systems vanished, crops flooded, and untold property ruined. Area highways, including 212 south of Red Lodge, were closed due to multiple road washouts, effectively closing the Beartooth Pass.
Streamflow gauges depicted the true magnitude of what occurred. On June 13, as reported by the USGS Water Data website, the average water discharge volume on Rock Creek at Red Lodge is around 500 cubic feet per second (CFS). On the same date this year, the gauge measured 2,500 CFS and it was still rising.
As Red Lodge locals worked feverishly to save their town, Rock Creek was not the only angry drainage to rise above its banks and show its destructive power. Nearby, the East Rosebud had grown from a docile creek to a roaring river which flooded anything near its banks, including the town of Roscoe. Further downstream, the Rosebud swept a home off its foundation and wiped out the Nye Road bridge at Ollies Corner, shutting down access to the Stillwater Mine.
Another main Beartooth Mountain drainage, the Stillwater River, a magnet for rafters which flows north to the Yellowstone River, was also rising out of control – tripling in size in just one day. Without warning to provide time for defensive measures, it sent residents scrambling to safety. The river flooded homes close to its banks, washed out bridges and scattered trees throughout its path. Gauge measurements showed the magnitude of its growth with the average flow velocity in mid-June around 3,000 CFS, but reaching over 22,000 CFS between June 10 and June 13 this year, a seven-fold increase.
As all the waterways draining from the Beartooth Mountains were competing for attention, the Clark’s Fork was no exception. A tributary of the Yellowstone River, it descends from the Absaroka Range beginning near the town of Cooke City. It flows into the northwest corner of Wyoming before working its way back into Montana. In normal years, the upper river lives up to its reputation as a recreationist’s paradise for fishing and kayaking. After reentering Montana, it widens and snakes at a slower pace where it becomes the main source of irrigation for the vast agricultural lands between the communities of Belfry, Bridger, Fromberg and Edgar.
Just one day behind the flooding in Red Lodge, the Clark’s Fork gorged with runoff broadening far beyond its banks to flood all the low-lying areas throughout the valley. Homes, businesses, feedlots, and crops were consumed by water and buried by debris. Multiple canal headgates were damaged, impacting the ability to continue irrigating fields into the critical growing season. At Fromberg, the river ravaged half the town in a matter of hours and as hard as volunteer rescuers worked, Search and Rescue helicopters were called in to help displaced families who could not be reached.
Meanwhile, in Yellowstone National Park, the headwaters of the Yellowstone and its tributaries also began raging as snowpack melted with the rain. The Gardiner River, a 25-mile river flowing through the Park and between Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner, washed out substantial portions of Highway 89, closing the North Entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Joining up with the Yellowstone River at Gardiner, the combined flow continued washing out sections of 89, stranding tourists and isolating the Gardiner community.
As the Yellowstone continued to gather steam, it ripped homes from previously high and protected banks and swept the Tom Miner Basin Bridge right off its foundation, adding more rubble to the collection of wreckage it packed downstream. The flooding then picked up volume from multiple creeks coming down the Paradise Valley and hit Livingston late on June 13 with flood levels never before seen.
From there, it continued to grow even larger. Adding huge inflows from the Boulder River, the Stillwater and the Clark’s Fork, the Yellowstone was transformed into a brown, muddy, debris-filled monster. By the time it reached Billings, it had spread to areas having never been touched before by the river. On June 15, the gauge height when the Yellowstone crested measured over 83,000 CFS, over three times higher than its 25,000 CFS June average. Damage was widespread, even threatening the water intake plant for the city of Billings.
After several weeks of destructive behavior, Montana rivers settled back into their regular courses and newly carved ones, exposing evidence of their spillage and leaving residents, business owners, farmers and ranchers to clean up the mess. Damages are estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars range. It will be months, or longer, before totals are tallied and years before infrastructure of buildings, irrigation systems, bridges and roads are built back to the degree they were before those fateful days in June 2022. Even the rivers, which are still strewn with trees and debris will take years to clear.
Amid the catastrophic event, all were reminded what a dynamic land Montana is as neighbors, ranchers, business owners, first responders and volunteers worked shoulder to shoulder offering help to one another, pitching in where possible, and embracing the power of overcoming calamity together.