Whats going on at yellowstone?

I think this hypothesis is possible, and I hope spring comes sooner rather than later for a much needed lake bottom survey!

reply to post by Hx3_1963


These are definite possibilities! Unfortunately there's a mystery at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and only YVO knows the nature of the changes possibly induced by the swarm at this location.

My concern is a sudden collapse in some portion of the uplift area causing an extreme hot/cold interface which could quickly destabilize the area.

Hopefully spring and the lake-bottom survey will come sooner rather than later.

Also, based on information gleaned from the videos HX3 posted, we should see a significant increase in number and size of geysers(and large earthquakes)before a major eruption. However if a large earthquake allowed water to enter magma chamber we may not get much of a warning. With other scenarios such as collapse of the geyser field we may get a brief warning. I agree, we need all these instruments working properly to be able to tell. Even then we are only getting half the picture! We have wished for a long time one of these experts would find this thread! I still think we need the earthquake predicter dude on here. Remember Bernie?

Excellent work! Graphics and audios kick a**!

Thanks for another perspective Jenny! Looking at the second graphic(gauge height)in your link, the water level was dropping until the 15th of December and then started climbing.(whatever the reason) Something to speculate on?....I remember the 15th being brought up on here as maybe when all of this latest activity actually started.



[edit on 8-2-2009 by dodadoom]

reply to post by jennyj


Jenny you may find the mathematics of my January 11th post to be of interest. In that post I provided calculations regarding the required uplift to result in the increased outflow if the increased outflow were in fact due to uplift. The lake outflow was at that time only 108 cubic feet/second above the long term mean. Today's flow rate may indicate an even greater inflow or uplift rate.

A side note for those concerned with global warming is the relative consistency of the freeze-up and ice-out dates for Yellowstone Lake shown in the fifty years of data in the referenced study to which I provided a link.

reply to post by jennyj


Excellent observations if I may say. I have been interested in the lake outflow since this all began and I would concur with you completely. I too spend my work time manipulating data. power staion outputs etc, and I still consider that whilst perhaps not indicative of an impending event, the outflow data has significance.

Bearing in mind that the uplift recorded on the GPS is somewhat insignificant in terms of altering the structure of the lake, i.e the tilt will be having little impact on the ability of the lake to discharge, one does have to ask why the upward trend, when all other discharge rates in the area are pretty much around the norm. (Sorry for being repetitious)

Shirakawa pointed out that the discharge of the lake can be 10 times higher at other times of the year but that does not detract from the fact that the current trend is way out of the norm.

The reading that would be very interesting to have, but which unfortunately is not available for this outlet, is the temperature.

Originally posted by Old Farmer
reply to post by jennyj

 

Today's flow rate may indicate an even greater inflow or uplift rate.

....relative consistency of the freeze-up and ice-out dates for Yellowstone Lake shown in the fifty years of data.....

I had a look at your calculations and I would agree that if it was all uplift, it would have to be massive. It is probably inflow, but the may be an uplift component in there as well.

The article was a little worrying in the sense that if you condense it down to one sentence the writer was in effect saying we don't actually know and the lake and discharge rates need more study.

'Global Warming'(?) has led to one of the coldest winters we have had in my part of Ireland. We have snow on the ground - a rare thing here! This however is another topic!

[edit on 8/2/2009 by PuterMan]

reply to post by PuterMan


Thanks Old Farmer, I too have looked at your calculations (how the heck did I miss this in January?) I will take a look at the article later today.

I agree with your assessment, PuterMan, in that the possibilities lean towards a combination of inflow and uplift. Yellowstone is a complicated woman, so I lean towards a combined and complicated causal scenerio as opposed to a single great event.

In all honesty, I'm generally uncomfortable hypothesizing in areas where I have such a limited knowledge base. However, for the life of me, I cannot think of many other reasonable scenerios that would account for the YNP trend, and the duration thereof. So I certainly welcome any discussion of reasonable ideas out there.

With fellow analysts like yourselves staying in the mix and on the hunt for valid data - I'm comforted to know that I am not alone and twisting in the wind on this issue!

Keep up the great work - perhaps we can light a fire under someone's rear to address this issue or to at least keep us informed if they are already diligently doing so.

With the passage of time and having seen several more weeks of Yellowstone seismograms, I'm officially ready to declare my strong skepticism that what we saw on the seismograms in late December/early January was either wind or distant earthquakes registering in Yellowstone. Here's a gif of the Mary Lake seismogram on January 1, 2009:

Mary Lake, Jan. 1, 2009

And here's a gif of the Mammoth Hot springs seismogram on that same day. Mind you, this seismometer is only a short distance north of Mary Lake:

Mammoth, Jan. 1, 2009

The Mary Lake seismometer and the Mammoth seismometer were both set to 100 microvolts.

I have often expressed my skepticism towards the conspiary theories on this board, and I try to look at this material scientifically. But I have a very, very, very hard time accepting the official story that two seimograms a short distance apart and each set to 100 microvolts could look that different if either wind or distant earthquakes were involved.

The seismograms may or may not depict harmonic tremor, but the official story is that they either show wind or distant earthquakes and that is clearly bunk.

If there were any doubt in this regard, just generate a seismic report on this extremely helpful website for January 1, 2009:

Yellowstone Seismic Archive Link

You will see that the seismograms which are closest to the Yellowstone Lake area are all lit up like a Christmas tree with this continuous tremor-like activity, while the more distant seismograms only register the actual earthquakes.

Now trying doing the same thing for January 2, 2009 and December 29, 2008. You'll see the exact same pattern- miraculous "wind" storms in areas of the park closest to Yellowstone Lake that 1) look nothing like the seismograms in subsequent or prior weeks and 2) that don't show the same continuous-type tremor activity in seismometers further from the lake area. Here's the Mark Lake seismogram from December 29, 2008:

Mary Lake, Dec. 29, 2008

Jake Lowenstern, Bob Smith or anyone at NVO, please explain to me this extraordinary wind phenomenon that only effects seismograms near Yellowstone Lake! And please explain how it is that none of the seismograms for the last month or so show these constant "wind" tremors. Has wind stopped blowing in Yellowstone Park? And while you're at it, please explain why the seismometers all went offline for that 3 hour period on January 1.

At this point, the evidence is overwhelming that the seismograms in question show a continuous tremor-type activity that can be neither wind nor distant seismic activity. That's the official story, and the fact that they are apparently putting out false info makes me wonder why they don't want to give us the real reason for this continuous tremor.

I'm going to try to e-mail this question to YVO and I will report their response, if any.

reply to post by rigel434


While I don't think they're harmonic tremors (Redoubt is having tremors at the moment, and they're felt by many seismic stations at the same time), you're right in saying that those signals need some more investigation. I've never seen those again.

I tried to download data from December 29th at YML from VASE 2.8 to convert it to audio with PuterMan's QuakeData utility, but I couldn't connect to IRIS servers. I think audio analysis could be useful in undestanding what happened.

I've found e-mail addresses for all 9 of the USGS authors of the 2007 report on Yellowstone and will e-mail them shortly. My e-mail includes a link to this thread so if they weren't aware of it before, they will be now. So for those of a conspiratorial bent, put extra tin foil on your caps and keep a lookout for the black choppers- they could be inbound. (it's a joke!)

I've been looking through prior weeks at Yellowstone and have still found nothing like what we saw during the swarm. Nothing like this Dec. 29, 2008 seismogram at Mirror Lake Plateau:

www.isthisthingon.org...

I did find some really funky seismograms for Dec. 4, 2008- three of the seismogram stations show THIS:

www.isthisthingon.org...

I wonder what THAT is all about.

I hate to be just plain stupid and I know if this has been discussed somewhere along the way I am going to make someone mad.

I try to keep up with this thread because I find it extremely interesting especially for someone like me that does not have clue but I am extremely intimidated when I see that there are over 400 pages to wade through here so please forgive me.

I have heard a lot of talk about a pole shift. I have noticed that there does seem to be a shift in where the sun normally sets in the sky out were I live; now this may be seasonal. I may only be aware of it because I have started to notice things that I never noticed before.

But how would a shift in the earth’s axis play out with the flow of the underground water flows and magma. Could even a slight shifts cause enough of a change that it would register or be noticed?

reply to post by Shirakawa


Yes, I have been getting the same problem all day. IRIS seems to be down. Maybe it does not get fixed if broken on a Sunday?

Soldier 1, " It's quiet."

Soldier 2, "Yeah, too quiet."

Originally posted by Robin Marks
Soldier 1, " It's quiet."

Soldier 2, "Yeah, too quiet."

I was just thinking the same thing.
California a little too quiet as well.

Old Faithful seems to be making some popcorn at the moment.

www.seis.utah.edu...

www.seis.utah.edu...

reply to post by NightSkyeB4Dawn


NASA Claims Sun Polar Shift Due In 2012

www.gvnr.com...

The Sun's magnetic poles will remain as they are now, with the north magnetic pole pointing through the Sun's southern hemisphere, until the year 2012 when they will reverse again. This transition happens, as far as we know, at the peak of every 11-year sunspot cycle -- like clockwork.

Earth’s magnetic field also flips, but with less regularity. Consecutive reversals are spaced 5 thousand years to 50 million years apart. The last reversal happened 740,000 years ago. Some researchers think our planet is overdue for another one, but nobody knows exactly when the next reversal might occur.

[edit on 8-2-2009 by manotick]

[edit on 8-2-2009 by manotick]

YFT Ol' Faithful looking a little active today...a few spikes this afternoon/evening...

reply to post by rigel434
I agree with you that the "wind" explanation now looks a bit far-fetched. There have been no similar, extraordinary traces on YS webicorders since those remarkable days that you cited, and I would expect that it still gets windy there at times. I don't think there were any reports of tornadoes in YS at that time, and relative to other "wind" effects that have been seen, that's the sort of winds that would have been needed.

I short, unless I see reports of strong winds that correlate to similar "Pollock" traces (as we took to calling them), I remain unconvinced that wind was the culprit. On the other hand, there could have been some other factor that was not seismic in nature. We just don't know.

About the outage of all the YS webicorders on 1/1: this was discussed back in the thread, but I'd forgive you if you haven't read it! The answer was finally obtained and it was a simple one. A "leap second" was added at midnight on 12/31 -- 1/1, and unfortunately some of the webis' software had not been programmed to account for it. To put it in non-tech terms (as I'm neither an EE nor a s/ware expert ) this resulted in the machinery going a bit ga-ga, so it all had to be shut down and later restarted. Nothing sinister, just a lack of foresight on the part of whoever set up the programs. There was a major maker of some kind of player or game machine that had the same problem on New Year's Day, actually. Again, it was mentioned in the thread in reference to this.

Regards,

Mike

reply to post by jennyj
Hi jennyj and thanks for your excellent, well-reasoned, analytical posts. The fact that you agree with many of us that the lake levels are significant is also appreciated...

Back on page 322 of this thread I posted series of animated-gif graphs to show the lake levels for the past 20 years. They demonstrate that above-the-norm levels have occurred before, and in fact it would be a bit hard to believe if they didn't show that as we are dealing with a natural system. However, they also indicate that the present upward trend, which began at the time of the first activity in Yellowstone in mid-December (ie just prior to the swarm), is still rather anomalous in some respects: the sudden upward swing away from the long-term norm at that time does not seem explicable on the basis of weather factors alone, and the same applies to its continuing upward trend.

I can confirm that the periods of marked "uptick" in outflow rate seemed to generally coincide with the days of the most intense seismic activity. It's difficult to do a detailed analysis because on some days when upticks occurred, the data from the webis was either unavailable or patchy at best. (Intense activity seems to knock LKWY offline quite often, for example.) All the same, the hypothesis that lake outflow rates may be partially linked to the amount of seismic activity within the park is not without some empirical basis.

It's surprising (to me, at least) that no-one from the YVO has made any official comment on the lake's discharge rate.

Errrm....If my post if a bit hard to follow it's because I haven't had my second coffee yet...

A note to all the other YS "regulars": I needed a few days away, but I've now caught up and read everything. Brilliant work by all of you -- and that new vid by Shirakawa is just outstanding.

Best regards,

Mike

I cant seem to access the HAARP main web page as of today. Can somebody else give it a try please.