Weather Extremes Impacting National Park Sites

Severe weather in much of the United States led Monday to full and partial closures of national park units, including Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park and the Newfound Gap Road across Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Elsewhere in the National Park System, blizzard-like weather, flooding, and the possibility of tornadoes were impacting parks.

At Shenandoah in Virginia the National Park Service closed the entire 105-mile-long Skyline Drive due to winds potentially gusting to 75 mph. According to the National Weather Service, weather conditions from Georgia to Pennsylvania had the potential to spawn tornadoes. 

Staff at Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina cited the same forecast in closing the NewFound Gap Road, which ties Gatlinburg, Tennessee, to Cherokee, North Carolina.

It remained to be seen whether Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, which was closed through the weekend due to torrential downpours and strong winds that did some damage to park facilities, would open Monday.

Elsewhere in the park system:

• Petersburg National Battlefield in Virginia was closed due to the forecast calling for severe high winds.
• Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park in South Carolina was closing at 2 p.m. due to the same forecast.
• Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa was closed due to winter storm conditions.
• Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in Iowa also was closed due to a winter storm.
• The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., was to close at 2 p.m. EDT.
• Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia closed at noon local time due to " forecasted severe weather, including high winds and strong thunderstorms, that could create hazardous conditions. "
• Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia Park closed "buildings and services including restrooms, museums, visitor center, and shuttle service at noon local time."

Driving the closures in the Mid-Atlantic States was a "March Megastorm [that] is expected to intensify and reach bomb cyclone status as it moves across the central and eastern United States," the meteorologists at AccuWeather said.

“This massive storm is unleashing winter and springtime hazards at the same time. More than 200 million people could be impacted, from blizzard conditions in the Midwest to severe thunderstorms across the East, along with powerful winds sweeping across dozens of states,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty said.  

He added that, "[S]ome storms could rotate and produce tornadoes. Widespread damaging winds may knock out power as storms move across the region. Some of the most dangerous and disruptive weather today could unfold during school dismissal and the evening commute from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia and Baltimore.” 

A winter storm in the Upper Midwest “is creating a dangerous combination of heavy snow and strong winds across the Upper Midwest. Blizzard conditions, blowing snow and snowfall rates of 2 to 4 inches per hour are making travel extremely difficult, if not impossible, in some areas."

In the Southwest, a building heat dome was predicted to bring unseasonably high temperatures to parks later this week. Zion National Park in southwestern Utah was forecast to see temperatures above 90 degrees by Thursday, and the Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for Death Valley National Park in Nevada, where temperatures were expected to climb past 100° Fahrenheit beginning Wednesday and running through the weekend.

Temperatures also were predicted to eclipse the century mark at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in extreme southern Arizona beginning Thursday.

“This heat is arriving far earlier than normal, with temperatures in parts of the Southwest running one to two months ahead of historical averages,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Elizabeth Danco said. “Triple-digit heat in Phoenix and the Inland Empire of California in mid-March is a striking signal of how intense this heat dome will become later this week.” 

The Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California for the entire week, though highs were only expected to reach into the upper 70s. A similar advisory was in place for Golden Gate National Recreation Area near San Francisco and Channel Islands National Park off the California coast.

A National Park Service webpage intended to provide information on severe weather impacts to the park system had not been updated since September 2025, and Interior staff did not immediately respond Monday when asked if updates would be coming.