I woke up on the morning of Monday, June 13 and saw that the spring runoff was in full force on the Yellowstone River, where I work as a fly fishing guide. It had been raining for nearly three weeks straight, so a higher water level was expected. I stopped by a river access point a couple of blocks from my house in Livingston, Montana, on my way to work. The 9th Street Island side channel is typically full during springtime, and the rest of the year it is reduced to a trickle while the main channel carries drift boats and rafts through town. On Monday, the river was big, loud, and muddy. It looked angry.

When I got to work at the , I brought up the USGS streamflow charts for rivers near Corwin Springs and Livingston. Both showed steeply rising graphs and no signs of leveling out. I saw Instagram posts from friends in Gardiner. If I thought the river at 9th Street looked angry, the water near Gardiner looked furious, and it was coming my way. Every hour, the river surpassed historic record flows. Then, the first bridge went out.

My phone started to blow up with rapid updates. The gauging stations were overwhelmed by raging water and went offline. Roads washed out, and people were stranded. Yellowstone National Park was evacuated. Another bridge was destroyed. A garage tumbled into the river, followed by a house.

When I left the fly shop on Monday at 5 P.M., there was no water in the yard, but when I came back 2.5 hours later, it was shin-deep around the building, and it sounded like a waterfall was gushing in the basement. Debris was everywhere. I went to check on the drift boats and found myself submerged up to my waist. My stepfather stayed at the shop all night, babysitting the sump pump in the basement and keeping an eye on the rising waters.

The next morning, the water level had risen again, and we had to park down the road and walk to the shop in waders. We borrowed another pump and set it up, trying hard to keep electrical wires dry and hoses kink-free. On a lunch break, I drove into the valley after Highway 89 was reopened and saw for the first time the real destruction and devastation that had hit. We got lucky at the shop.

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