SAN JOSE, Calif. — The massive snowpack in the Sierra Nevada this year has transformed California’s most famous park, Yosemite. And the impacts are likely to last all summer, and perhaps even longer.
The park’s world-famous waterfalls are thundering now as billions of gallons of melted snow cascade 1,000 feet or more down sheer granite cliffs. Park officials say there is so much snow at higher elevations from the winter’s parade of atmospheric river storms that flooding in Yosemite Valley is likely between late April and early July, which could close the park at times.
“All of the water is a huge change from the previous few years,” said Cory Goehring, lead naturalist for the Yosemite Conservancy, a San Francisco nonprofit group that runs outdoor programs in the park. “The meadows are wet and lush. The Merced River is rising. It’s raging. And the waterfalls? They are so loud, they sound like an airplane taking off with how loud they are.”
