Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by PuterMan


I think about 1.2-1.5 magnitude, if it's similar in depth and distance from the seismic station to the other ones occurred these days in the same area. It's the one on the bottom of this LKWY seismometer trace. I don't know why recently earthquakes occurring in the Yellowstone area require all this time to be reported. By comparison the job done in the last two months by the Alaska Volcano Observatory staff with Redoubt volcano is hundreds of times better, faster, and more transparent to the public.

[edit on 2009/2/27 by Shirakawa]

When I think of geologists, I don't imagine them as an overly emotional group. They tend to be well grounded and not prone to knee-jerk reactions. But the Republicans and Bobby Jindal have got their blood boiling.

www.bitsofnews.com...

www.msnbc.msn.com...

I'm sure you can find lots of other stories about the reaction to the GOP's "volcano monitoring" statement. The Republicans are starting to resemble the Flat Earth Society. I wouldn't be suprised if Bobby Jindal thinks Doppler Radar is witchcraft.

Here's a perfect example of why the USGS needs the money.

www.seis.utah.edu...

Note the reconfiguration. This is common for the LKWY. But what's the deal with the activity at 14:50 UTC? It doesn't register on any other monitor. Do you think someone is already spending their money? I wonder if somone manually engaged LKWY as a test. Always something interesting happening at the old "LKWY", and it's not just about the quakes.

* see why I don't like to edit. It took me four edits to fix my mistakes and I bet there's still some.



[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

Puterman desperatley seeks the location of the impending ash cloud after hearing reports on ATS that Yellowstone blew it's top.

Edit: Background photo of St Helens from USGS files


[edit on 27/2/2009 by PuterMan]

reply to post by PuterMan


You are too funny and all too true!!
Keep up the good work!

reply to post by PuterMan


IIV BEEN DEALING WITH BROKEN PCS HERE , BUT IM BORROWING MY BROTHERS FOR THE NIGHT. JUST WANTED TO SAY I LOVE THE COMIC PIC. AND ITS TRUE.

Has anyone figured out the origin of the shaker @ 14:50? Sort of strange as mentioned above.
I keep checking in on you all - glad to see the great minds still crunching information; kudos to you all.. Still waiting on Redoubt..

[edit on 27-2-2009 by akjen]

reply to post by akjen


One thing is certain: it's not a shaker. It's a broadband noise that I can't define. It could be a flock of passing noisy birds or maybe simply a wide bandwidth test for the seismometer after recalibration. I don't know.

Spectrum:



Waveform:



WAV Download link (50x speed)

[edit on 2009/2/27 by Shirakawa]

Recently "RSOE" added 3 new risk categories. It is to note whether 1) a volcano 2) an airport and 3) or a nuclear facility is located near the epicenter.

Today, Japan had an earthquake with all 3 flagged as risks.

Also, there has been an increase in small earthquakes and a decrease in the larger ones. Not sure what it all means, just tossing it in the mix.


visz.rsoe.hu...

[edit on 27-2-2009 by Siren]

I'm still checking in on this thread from time to time and applaud all the great work many of you have put in here. There's more information on seismic activity and data interpretation in this thread than anywhere else that I've searched on the internet. This thread is probably the main reason I hold out any hope that ATS is a place I regularly want to visit.

reply to post by Shirakawa


The only thing that makes me curious is the foreshock and @ YMR you can see some reflection but nothing of real merit.. hmmm

reply to post by akjen


On the webicorder what you're seeing may look as a foreshock, but the spectrum and the sound when played as a wave file are totally different from those of any other earthquake. I don't really think it's seismic.

I think i've already seen almost the same signals on LKWY webicorder during past months by the way.
Here's a LKWY webicorder archive if you want to check past traces for those.

Hi Robin

You asked me to have a look at your theory re Yellowstone, which I have done, and below are my findings.



The drawing above shows the following:

Light area top left: Swarms 1985, 1995 & 2004
Light area to right: Swarm 2009

These are overlaid on a Google Earth snap of the Yellowstone area with the caldera KMZ switched on.

Lower right is your map taken from the video on YouTube.

As you can see the layout of the modern day more or less matches, but the position of the 630,000 year caldera does not. My understanding of your theory, and please do not hesitate to correct me if I am wrong, is that the latest swarm was moving along the edge of the old Caldera, and would break loose when it met the line of faults (not shown on your map - you drew them in later) that run between the two domes.

Aside from the fact that you are suggesting that this follows the pattern which you percieve for Hudson Bay (for which I can find no evidence - and I have tried) where earthquakes, you postulate, would cause cracking over the magma chamber where the old and new calderas meet, this does not seem to apply in this case.

Firstly the line of the 2009 swarms does not follow the rim of the old caldera, or the new one. Secondly what you were showing on the video was the faults between the two domes and not a caldera rim. (I am not suggesting that you were saying it was by the way)

If your theory that earthquakes along the boundaries of an old and a newer caldera would cause the collapse of the roof of the magma chamber were correct, then the earlier swarms, in theory at least, should have triggered that since that is exactly where they occurred.

As regards that particular theory then, personally I would have to say that I do not agree

HOWEVER...........

With regard to the faulting, this is a different matter and may have some merit. Yes there is a line of faults running across the top of the northern edge of the lake and meeting up with fault lines on the Sour Creek dome.


Drawing taken from USGS site volcanoes.usgs.gov...

Add to this the uplift map which I know you have all seen many times before (so apologies)




Since the northern side of the lake is uplifting, and this basically is in the area between the two domes, then there definitely is potential for some activity there IMHO.

Interestingly the last few eqs shown are immediately above (north) of the swarm of 2008/9, and the ones shown are only very recent. It does look as if the march northwards continues. I cannot think that continuance of this into the faulted area could be a good thing.

I cut this dwon a bit as I thought it was going to be too long to post, but it seems it was only half the allowed amount!

Edit: Been thinking about this. I may have something wrong here but I am not sure what. Someone shoot me down if they wish.

[edit on 27/2/2009 by PuterMan]

reply to post by PuterMan


Dear Puterman,

Thank you for investigating. However I don't think your location for the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff caldera is correct. I'll provide links for the location of the caldera I got from the map with the locations for the monitoring stations at the park.
It shows the caldera rim running through the middle of the lake. I had a hard time find an exact location until I realized it was on the map I was referencing to find the location of a particular station.

www.seis.utah.edu...

pubs.usgs.gov...

On this map (I wish I knew how to display the maps like yourself, I'm not computer savoy and don't have the time to figure it out.), you will notice that the 2 million old caldera is dashed because it is uncertain. I'm guessing it's an older map. I tried to find more information, but like I said, I'm not that good at finding everything I want on the web.
The difference between the earlier swarms and this most recent, is that the lake is the key factor. As the chamber lifts the ground, it allows more fracturing and allows more water to enter the aquifer. Simply put. I wasn't overly concerned about the swarm at Yellowstone until I realized that they were under the lake.
You won't find any evidence for volcanoes forming Hudson Bay. I've looked and looked. But there has been much speculation that the perfect semi-circle in the Southeastern end of the bay was caused by an asteroid impact. However, geological surveys have concluded that it was not, due to the geology of Belcher Island. On next link Belcher Island is second question down.

www.unb.ca...

Geologists think this perfect circle was created fortuilously. I don't believe this is true. When I mapped out the other two circular shorelines, one of them went right through Churchill Manitoba. I can't find it now, but a geologist on You Tube ( he didn't buy my idea and suggested I get a degree) informed me that there was an ancient shoreline found in Churchill dating back approx 400 mya. Which is within the timeframe I have stated. Well, I'll wrap this up because the topic is Yellowstone. But I do believe the same thing is happening at Yellowstone.
If you want evidence of water effecting an eruption there is very little. Just speculation that Karkatoa and Santorini may have been breached by seawater.

Thank you again for investigating.
Sincerely,
Robin











[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

[edit on 27-2-2009 by Robin Marks]

reply to post by Robin Marks


Thank you Robin. This is interesting that USGS has apparently got conflicting information. The map you linked to does, as you say, show the older caldera in a completely different location to that displayed by the KMZ file in Google Earth. One of us is being mislead by incorrct information, but the question is which one of us? Both sources are USGS so I will take this up with them and see if I can get an answer.

It was for this reason that I added my comment at the end that something may be wrong at the end since I think the black circles refer to the placing of the hot spot at different ages and not a caldera, which of course are two different things. The problem is that they show the red circle as 'modern' referring to the caldera and the black circle as 630,000 years ago, yet surely it was the event 630,000 agao that gave rise to the caldera.

As I say I will see what I can find out, and then revisit this when I have some answers.

On an aside, to display pictures, you can now upload your picture to ATS using the new media upload:

media.abovetopsecret.com...

I am not sure how you link to these ones as I have not tried it yet. Perhaps someone else can explain.


[edit on 28/2/2009 by PuterMan]

Hi Folks.

The latest version of QuakeData is on my download site (See link in signature)

Please note this is QuakeData and NOT QuakeDataLite the stand alone version. Update to that one shortly.

This version has audio file source batching and concatenation. It is a bit untested as I have not had time, but I am sure you will find the 'bugs'!!

Also updated is the SQL Server 2005 backup file with all USGS data up to today.

reply to post by PuterMan


Thanks for your efforts.
I couldn't manage to properly test the program, though. I get this error for every SAC_ASCII file I open:



By the way, did you receive my email with my command-line version in Java of an equivalent SAC to WAV audio conversion tool (which involves, with a batch file, just drag and dropping to convert a file; it's extremely fast and I used it a lot these days) ?

reply to post by Shirakawa


I'll get back to you. The uncompiled version is running fine.

line 2

reply to post by PuterMan


The latest version of QuakeData is withdrawn until I can resolve the problem which only seems to be affecting files over 1 MB

Apologies! V1.1.0 is still the current version.

[edit on 28/2/2009 by PuterMan]

In the meanwhile here's the link to my command-line Java version of a SAC to WAV converter:

Download link (91 Kb)

Zip contents:
IRIS_BudDataCenter.2009.53.16.59.56.AV.RSO..EHZ.SAC ... a test file you can try to convert to wav with this program
qSAConverter.jar ... the converter in executable jar format
GO.bat... the batch file to convert SAC files just by dragging and dropping them on it

Usage:
After having downloaded a binary (not ascii) SAC seismograph trace on a folder, unzip the content of the archive there and then drag and drop the SAC file on GO.bat . A 32 bit 8000 hertz WAV file will be generated in generally much less than one second. The speed multiplication depends on the sample rate of the original file (I will change this in the future if requested, it remained this way because I didn't really need it as I always open and edit my files in an audio editing program). You can view the waveform graphically (and editing or changing its sample rate) by opening it in the free audio editing program Audacity, available for both Windows and Linux.

The program has got no GUI, and has very limited functionalities, but it's very simple to use and it's very fast, especially when converting a lot of files one after each other. Just drag and drop them on the batch file... if some require time (this will happen rarely though), don't worry, the program supports multiple instancing.

Misc stuff:
No controls on data integrity have been implemented yet, so trying to change improperly values in the batch file or trying to convert files other than in standard binary SAC format may lead to unexpected results.

The program is not bugfree, but should be safe to use, anyway.
It has been tested on files of over 30 Megabytes of size.

[edit on 2009/2/28 by Shirakawa]

Well it looks like the LKWY is up to it's old tricks. Except this time the "pipecleaners are morphing and are not quite regular. Puterman, Shirakawa, what are your thoughts on this? I'm not even going to give an opinion. I seem to recall there was a majority opinion that they were from a heating/AC pump. Are these new variations still consistent with that hypothesis? I hope the YVO crew replaces the equipment early in the spring considering they're getting the 800 000 dollars they wanted.

I had a couple thoughts on the the Yellowstone calderas but I was going to write later. At the moment I am curious about these newest aberrations at LKWY.