Photos Show Yosemite Waterfalls from Above as Snow Melts

Waterfalls flowed from the peaks of Yosemite National Park as the record-breaking Sierra Nevada snowpack started to melt.

Pictures and videos of the meltwater from above were snapped on Friday by Mark Finan, chief meteorologist for the KCRA 3 weather team, aboard a LiveCopter 3. In a Youtube video, Finan revealed his spectacular images.

"Last Friday I was given the opportunity to fly in a LiveCopter 3 to the Yosemite Valley," Finan said in the video.

"We were concerned about the Merced River flooding, and there was an upcoming closure of part of the park due to the potential for flooding because of the snow melt going on. It also provided me an opportunity to see Yosemite in a way that I've never seen it before—and a few of us ever do. To be able to hover over the valley at about 11,000 feet for a couple of hours gives you perspectives of things like El Capitan and Half Dome and the waterfalls that you just don't often see," he said.

The footage of the water cascading into the valley shows the impact of the sudden melting of the enormous snowpack in the mountains, in what has been dubbed "the big melt".

As a result of the multiple powerful atmospheric river storms that pounded California since the start of the year, a huge amount of snow has been stored in the Sierra Nevada mountains, frozen in time and ready to melt.

Data from the California Department of Water Resources showed that in mid-March, the Southern Sierras had a snowpack 257 percent larger than the average for that time of year, breaking the previous record-holding season of 1982-1983, with the Central and Northern Sierras also having much larger than average snowpacks at 218 percent and 168 percent, respectively.

The National Parks Service (NPS) said the snowpacks that would eventually melt into the Tuolumne River basin and the Merced River basin were at 244 percent and 241 percent of the seasonal average, respectively, as of April 1. These were both record-breaking levels.

Due to the rising spring temperatures, the snow has now started to melt, flowing down from the peaks and into the valleys below.

"The big melt is now here," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in an online "virtual weather and climate office hours" session streamed on YouTube on April 24. "This week is going to be an exclamation point on the warming process."

"We said there would eventually be some week between about March and May when the rate of snowmelt dramatically increased, either due to a heat wave or late-season warm storm. I think this is probably that week now," he continued.

The waterfalls in Yosemite are one major result of the massive snowmelt, with NPS data showing that Vernal Falls, Nevada Falls, Bridalveil Falls, and Yosemite Falls are all flowing at very high rates for the time of year.

Others posted videos on social media of the spectacular waterfall flows.

"Yosemite falls yesterday, it was so powerful it was generating its own wind! Never saw it like that ever!" user @1SwimChick posted to Twitter.

There are fears that the Merced River, which flows through Yosemite, may flood during the first week of May: The National Weather Service predicted that the Merced could reach 12.5 feet in some areas, over its 10-foot limit for flooding. The NPS has warned visitors to "use extreme caution anywhere near flowing water; stay back from riverbanks."

Flooding may also occur elsewhere across California, including the Tulare Lake Basin and the San Joaquin River Basin, as a result of the "big melt."

The flooding risk is exacerbated by the speed of the melt: if all the snow comes down at once, it will run over the ground instead of being soaked up by the soil.

"Timing also matters. All the rain at once means that much of it will run off into the ocean instead of filling California's reservoirs," Jacob Petersen-Perlman, a water resources geography expert and assistant professor at East Carolina University, previously told Newsweek.

Additionally, the ongoing megadrought across the U.S. southwest has dried the soil out to such a degree that water struggles to be absorbed, both limiting the amount that the groundwater stores can be replenished and increasing the risk of flooding.

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