The Grand Canyon’s vast, mile-deep landscape may appear timeless, but two devastating disasters have recently struck the iconic natural wonder as the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather.
Muddy brown floodwaters roared through Phantom Ranch on August 29, swamping the 1920s lodge that has welcomed adventurers seeking a rare chance to spend the night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and making it the park’s second historic structure impacted by a natural disaster in just over a year.
In July 2025, a destructive wildfire tore through dense pines on the canyon’s northern edge, destroying the historic Grand Canyon Lodge — the park’s only lodging there. The disastrous late-August flash flooding near Phantom Ranch struck below the burn scar left by that blaze, the National Weather Service said.
The climate crisis is making certain types of extreme weather events both more frequent and more severe. A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, which it wrings out in the form of more intense rainfall in some regions, potentially leading to devastating flooding. It’s also loading the dice in favor of wildfires that burn longer and hotter. In turn, landscapes marred by fire are more susceptible to flash flooding, due to sparse vegetation and changes in the soil.
