Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by Hx3_1963
I understand that a huge cold front went through much of the US yesterday (including that region) and an even colder one is expected today with temps in the mid-US expected to be down to minus 20 degrees Celsius (before factoring in the wind chill). So, while there may be snow along with it (as some argue this is all due to precipitation), I can't see that enough of it would melt to account for the continued uptrend of the lake's outflow. Ditto ice melt within the lake due to the weather.

And even if it were ice/snow melt due to weather, that wouldn't account for the rapid and quite large changes in outflow within one-hour time intervals. Some other factors really need to be taken into consideration. It could even be something as prosaic as a sticky float on the gauge but somehow I doubt it...

It would be interesting to look at recent seismograph traces and see if there is any correlation with the sudden swings in outflow.

EDIT: Note for Shirakawa: yes, when we see readings getting up around the 80th percentile then it's significant enough to make it worth digging a bit more. Well, a lot more, really...

Regards,

Mike

[edit on 14/1/09 by JustMike]

reply to post by JustMike



Thank you for the research with the water you have done, is there anyone who might explain why this could be (with the water coming up so fast)?

Water tables are definitely important to look.

reply to post by questioningall
Hate to say this but there's a lot of information and opinion about your query within this thread. But to be fair, as reading back through what amounts to a long novel would take a few days, I can suggest that if you click on the "thread" tag at the bottom of my post, you'll be able to see all my posts on this thread and among the more recent ones you'll find a lot, including links to other posters who have been involved in the discussions.

You can use the same method to selectively read the posts of any member, of course.

Meanwhile, a short summary of possible causes for the lake's increasing outflow above the mean would include:

Above-normal inflow into the lake. This does not appear to be supported by posts that give links to readings for other watercourses in the region.

A possible heat source within the lake that is melting surface ice. This is unconfirmed to date but cannot be excluded.

A source or sources of water in the lake, such as hydrothermal vents, that is/are spewing out more water than usual. It is known that there are vents in the lake but what they are doing right now is unknown to us.

A rise in part of the lake bed. This is possible as there are known to be "domed" areas in the northern part of the lake where the first swarm occurred.

A drop in the ground level by the lake's outflow region. There is scientific evidence that this is possible. A change in gradient of the river bed near the outflow is also known to occur in relation to an increase in the height of the main caldera dome, and I've given a reference to a fairly recent scientific research document (2003 I think) that states this unequivocally.

Normal variation. Studies of the past twenty years of graphs for outflow do show some periods of upward trending from the mean at this time of year. However, none of them appear to show such large, very short-term variations in outflow, as we are seeing right now.

A tilting of the entire lake region. Only a very small "tilt" of that area of land would be needed to cause increased (or decreased) outflow, depending on the direction of tilt. However, in that case, the outflow change would be presumably pretty constant; even if increasing it would be a steady trend. The hour-by-hour swings in flow are quite large and would seem to deny this possibility as a base cause. (But it could be a contributor.)

I think that's most of them. Other members can add extra ones.

Edit to add: water tables are also important to consider, but the problem is we have very little information about the actual water table configuration in that region and what, if any changes may have occurred recently. It is of course quite feasible that a quake or series of quakes could fracture an aquifer and lead to more water finding its way into the lake from even a non-hydrothermal source. If there has been such a "diversion" we might be made aware of it if nearby towns report losses of water supply drawn from normally reliable aquifers. (Drop in well levels, changes in water quality, etc.)

Regards,

Mike

[edit on 14/1/09 by JustMike]

Not sure if this of interest or not, and I am not a scientist, but I do watch a lot of science programs and have become quite interested in the areas of continent formation, volcanism, and of course YS.

Here is what I have learned with some references at the end.

As I understand it, a major influence on the geology of Alberta and BC vs. the northern US - and the volcanism in the US west - is do to plate tectonics.

About 75 million years ago the Pacific Plate began to bump into the North American Plate. At approximately the 49th parallel, today's border between western Canada and the US, the Pacific Plate reacted differently due to the type of land mass it was up against. South of the 49th parallel the Pacific Plate pushed the North American crust downward toward the earth's core and pushed magma to the surface creating substantial vulcanism throughout the western US. To the north however, the Pacific Plate could not push the crust downward so instead acted like a giant bulldozer pushing all before it into the side of the North American Plate. The result was uplift and the creation of the Canadian Rockies. Without the magma, there are no volcanoes in the Canadian Rockies, including many of the minerals that volcanism created in the US west.

I have driven across both sides of the US/Canadian border between the Manitoba/the Dakotas and the west coast and it is striking to see the difference in the colours of the mountains (grey in Canada vs. red/orange/brown in US) and the many voclanic cones on the US side.

A bit of natural history anyway.

Here are some links

www.mountainnature.com...

www.mountainnature.com...

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov...

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov...

reply to post by PuterMan


i would doubt USGS would worry to much about quakes less that say 3.5 - 4ish outside their borders ... would generate too much clutter on the plots (just my 2 bits worth ...)

at first glance this webcam looks like clouds and fog and then brown clouds..
I know it has to be a trick of the light, just not bright enough.
Have to wait a while and see what we can see, hope the sun burns off some of the fog so we can get a better look.
www.nps.gov...

Originally posted by dodadoom
reply to post by Hx3_1963

 

From that article www.pbs.org...

it says:

The Pacific Plate slides beneath these other plates, plunging into the earth at a steep angle. As the Pacific Plate sinks into the hot interior of the earth, melting occurs. The resulting magma migrates to the surface, where it eventually bursts through the crust in the form of a volcano.

That would infer more heat and in turn more chance for eruption it would seem. Or at least more volcanic activity. I guess it is open for speculation as most things are, just fun to speculate is all. I'm always interested in these theories!


[edit on 14-1-2009 by dodadoom]

Quick catch-up, and Good morning all,
Actually the Quote above about the plates is now not considered totally correct. They now believe the JDF dives under not at a steep angle but a much shallower angle. It's leading edge is what has been helping to push the various Calderas of Y's history across the lower part of Idaho in an upward arc to Y's present location now.
They believe that magma has had to puncture through the JDF leading edge to pool under the park today-the magma chamber. It is like an aneurysm to give it another description.

Got loaded down, will continue catch up later.

Mushussu

reply to post by PuterMan


on the other hand perhaps USGS hasn't reviewed it or QC ed it yet to meet their acceptance criteria ??? , that's only 1 day old(ish) ... But not too impressive, i'm thinking ......

reply to post by Mushussu


The Canadian "lithoprobe" project has seismic images of JDC going down at about 45degrees near southern Vancouver island .. Lithoprobe was/is a Canadian University & government project to do very deep seismic imaging across Canada ... I'll try to find an image for U ... Google will probably also work miracles ... P.S. Ron Clowes, Llithoprobe head was one of my profs at UBC ...


this one, in western Vancouver island seems like JD starts at about 28 Km depth, and gets to maybe 33 km over a very short distance , transect #2

www.lithoprobe.ca...
www.litho.ucalgary.ca... (transect #2)

[edit on 14/1/09 by geogeek]

reply to post by JustMike


Thank you for all the information you provided!

I had missed most of the start of the thread, as I had been out of town, so I had not gone through it, once I got involved there had been over 6000 post. So I admit - I did not read nor get up to speed with all the other post.

Your information is appreciated, and you obviously know a major amount of information and do research on earthquakes and volcanos.

I also want to state, that I have been having huge headaches for a few weeks now, and I have never had headaches like this, besides my ears hurting constantly.

What is also strange, I found out (through the health club) that a large amount of people here (Tn.) are having headaches and dizziness problems right now. They say it is a "flu".

I would like someone to tell me about this "flu", as I have not heard of a flu that causes those symptoms.

Hi guys been visiting with my mom here and dropped by to see how things where going and take a peek at the Old Faithful web cam for a bit. It is supposed to be 4 degrees and the snow is melted all the way up to OF and there is three guys just standing there and you can barely see any steam coming off OF right now???? It has steamed like mad all this time in this frigid weather... A little confused here in Cali.

to add: I take that back just got some intermittent puffs.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by xoxo stacie]

JustMike - thanks for good work. Just one thing - you are depending, so far, only on the data provided (no visual confirmation etc.). Your analysis seems to be the most thorough (more than any official source I have read in the media). But, the data may be wrong...or deceiving. If the data is correct, something big is happening, some big change. Still we can hope that it will not be a disaster.

Regarding the headache (for questioningall)...colloidal silver is a good antibiotic.

[edit on 14-1-2009 by greshnik]

Sorry all for the confusion on the Canadian Eq Service. Here's a link to answer some questions about how they measure Eq's different than the USSG...

earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca...
neic.usgs.gov...
earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca...


[edit on 1/14/2009 by Hx3_1963]

reply to post by greshnik


colloidal silver ?? wtf ???

reply to post by questioningall
Thanks for your comments. Most of my research over the past several years has focused on seismic activity related to quakes rather than volcanoes as such. I wouldn't say a I know a great deal but I'm trying to at least understand the basics. It's a huge subject and most experts specialize because there are so many possible fields of study. A lot of us on here are really doing the same thing on a smaller scale, because it's too much really for one person to handle.

About this "flu". I'm not a Medical Doctor but my brother is, and some years ago I was talking to him about flu and symptoms and so on. He explained to me that many infections that people classify as "flu" are probably not true influenza virus infections at all, and even if they are, there are various strains due to its shifting-antigen base and some are more severe than others. He did say, however, that flu symptoms cover a wide range and they can include intense headaches. He also told me that as viral conditions like flu are normally self-limiting -- meaning that we recover from them after a certain period of time and most medicines only treat the symptoms and not the infection itself -- then if the symptoms persist for too long it's worth getting some tests done to rule out other possible causes.

By the way, antibiotics are pretty useless for treating viral infections, so if you have a virus then save your money and just treat the symptoms. (Again, that's what my brother and also my own doc told me.)

In the case you've mentioned, with apparently large numbers of people having similar symptoms at the same time, it could be some kind of infectious agent, but there may be other causes. However, because discussing the other possibilities would lead us too far from the subject of this thread I'll leave it at that. However I'm sending you a U2U with info to direct you to a thread where you can talk to people who have been having symptoms similar to yours.

Getting back to the Yellowstone question, I think this thread is now so far along that we can't reasonably expect new(ish) readers to go back and read the whole 350 pages. It would be like the "painting a big bridge" situation. By the time they get to here, the thread will be several pages further along again. Probably it would be easiest to just skip back around thirty pages and skim through, looking for posts that either have a few stars or which include diagrams, maps, graphs or other forms of data that give a lot of information on something. That way, it's easy to see which members are posting the most on which subjects and then (if desired) click the "thread" tag for that member and read up on their posts.

Best regards,

Mike
Edited for typos.

[edit on 14/1/09 by JustMike]

reply to post by geogeek


what does wtf stand for?

second line

reply to post by greshnik


sorry , bad me, "What the F***" , i apologize

reply to post by JustMike



I have been watching postings in other forums about headaches etc. It seems to me something is going on and may be related to yellowstone or the magnetic core etc, with the amount of people that are having problems.

I was doing research the other day on clouds - pre-large earthquakes and I took screen shots of the clouds from Monday from a few different hours, along with my own video of them.

I am stating the above, due to the fact it seems the cloud formations that happened all day Monday - scientist say - a large quake will happen within 30 days of these type clouds.

I have been trying to verify these type clouds maybe being a precursor to an earthquake. They are the shaking seperated clouds. I will post the screen shots of them, from weather.com and maybe someone can say for certain if they are just a normal happening or not.

I went to many websites - and these were the type of clouds listed on earthquake sites. So if I am wrong about these, please do not attack my post, it is just that I am trying to uncover and research as much as possible about prequake happenings.




I took lots of video footage of the clouds looking shakey also.

reply to post by PuterMan
The USGS shows a lot of data world-wide, but it's a very selective world. They do not show anywhere near the amount of data for Canadian quakes as the Canadians do themselves. The same goes for quakes in the greater European region. For example, there have been mag 4-plus quakes off the coast of Spain that never appeared on the USGS maps. Ditto quakes in Turkey, and around Greece. Some show, others don't, and it's not just a matter of magnitude. USGS also sometimes publishes different data for quake depths from the data of countries close to where the quakes occurred -- and these can be countries with excellent technical facilities and skilled seismologists (such as in Iceland).

This is not to say that the USGS doesn't do a good job overall. They provide a huge amount of information and I for one am grateful for it. But...there are inconsistencies, which might stem from policy decisions rather than scientific ones.

Mike

Originally posted by geogeek
reply to post by greshnik

 

sorry , bad me, "What the F***" , i apologize

I knew that but thanks for the apology. I believe that colloidal silver is a good antibiotic (before penicilin it was in official use). Everyone should, of course, decide what they want to do. It works for me, I have been using it. I am by no means any expert...If you are interested, check the Bob Beck protocol on cancertutor.com. I am not related by any means to those people, but I find their site extremely useful.