A river with low-lying clouds has forced the park to shut down.
The park’s areas may receive up to 2.1 metres (seven feet) of snow this weekend.
Visitors to California’s Yosemite National Park have been advised to leave immediately, with blizzards expected throughout the region.
A sudden alert comes with a snow-laden river hovering over California, threatening to dump massive amounts of snow on high terrains. The Sierra Nevada mountains are located in Yosemite, which is at serious risk of seeing substantial overnight snowfall.
“The National Weather Service is forecasting several feet of snow throughout the park (Badger Pass may receive over seven feet!) with extremely high winds,”
the announcement continued.
Atmospheric rivers are long streams of moisture in the atmosphere that evaporate from the central Pacific ocean and are carried towards the western US by tropical weather systems. After reaching landfall, they tend to unload huge quantities of rain and snow, and are thought to provide roughly half of California’s annual precipitation.
For the current drought that has been plaguing the Golden State in recent years, these atmospheric rivers and the water they bring are largely welcomed, though they can occasionally get too large and ruin people’s weekends.
