Whats going on at yellowstone?

3.3 Magnitude earthquake in Yellowstone, occurred between YMR and YNR seismic stations.
That's the first significant earthquake in YNP since a good while:

www.seis.utah.edu...

3.3 2009/06/30 09:52:06 44.746N 110.791W 6.6 27 km (17 mi) ENE of West Yellowstone, MT

It looks like other smaller ones occurred but didn't get added yet to the list. This 3.3 one was probably too "big" to be added only by the discretion of YNP seismologists.
See how real events will show on most (if not all) webicorders.

[edit on 2009/6/30 by Shirakawa]

Did anything interesting happen on Fri-Sat-Sunday, folks?

reply to post by brokenheadphonez


As I wrote, today's 3.3 magnitude earthquake is the most significant event occurred on Yellowstone since a good while.

Unless, that is, you're interested in seismic noise caused by cars, people, animals, weather, seismic network malfunction, or signals caused by distant earthquakes, etc. (things I wouldn't even bother to report, personally).

[edit on 2009/6/30 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Shirakawa


That's a big coincidence..

reply to post by Shirakawa


Gee, sarcastic much?

I've never ever said I was an expert seismologist, though if you look at the 16:38UTC quake, it doesn't show very well on many of the sensors, which could make it easy to discount as actually being a quake.

If YPP was animal created, wth hasn't that signal pattern showed up before now???

Also, unlike UoU I pay attention to the park on the weekend.

M.

[edit on 30-6-2009 by Moshpet]

okay.... new cluster...
question..is there a regulair time line in it....

if so.... wat cuases it...the sun ..planets....watever...

Originally posted by ressiv
okay.... new cluster...
question..is there a regulair time line in it....

if so.... wat cuases it...the sun ..planets....watever...

Well if you look at the prior signals @ YPP, on the 29th, 27th you can see the signal start off small, then grow over time to a max intensity, after which it starts to go lower again.

Then if you look at today's cluster there is a small spike a pause then a larger one. If you contrast that to the typical earth quake signal, there are some similarities, enough so that I would say it's a micro-quake (under 1.0), with a small after quake. Then a few moments later a second micro quake.

There has been a lot of rain in the past week or so, so it is not unlikely that a fault would get 'lubricated' from ground water and slip a little.

The University of Utah (UoU) has the responsibility for monitoring and evaluating the quakes with in the park, and a good portion of the Inter Mountain West. In time you will see that UoU does not work on the weekends, and that the only time we get reports on the weekends from the USGS site about quakes in Yellowstone, is if they are 3.0+ and are picked up by folks 'other' than the UoU. They will staff the monitors on the weekend if there is a excessive amount of activity, like say at the beginning of the year. If you take today's reports of quakes from Utah, I just recently got a email report stating there was a 1.0 in Utah... for 10:05 UTC... and it's several hours after that.

Personally I think it's kinda stupid to have to wait for UoU to have the time to decide what is a quake and what isn't. I also think that they are missing a crap load of interesting things. SO I am looking for the 'cool and odd' signals, trying to see if there is something happening.

What I do when looking at the sensors is first I look at the right hand side for the UTC time of the signal. Then I open a pair of new tabs, one showing the World Earth Quake list (3.0 & greater) then I open the US Earth Quake List (1.0) and greater. Then I look for events within 5 minutes of the signal on the 1.0+ USA list , that I am trying to figure out the cause of. If there is a reported event 5 minutes prior to the one I am checking the time of, it's related to that one.

Then looking at the World 3.0+ list it gets a bit trickier. Cali & Alaska events take 3-4 minutes to reach the park. Puerto Rico takes about 12-15 minutes, and so on. Basically if there is an quake listed within 20 minutes prior and it's within the South America Region you can discount that event.

Further out, the events if they are 5.0+ show up as Love waves, (sawtooth) but it takes a serious quake to generate them.

Largely it falls to you to decide what is noteworthy and to learn what the signals may be. The ATS motto is to deny ignorance, so read up, learn and ask questions.

M.

I was moore thinking of sequence for the the events of much EQ like in dec/jan...... march/april...... now june and july....

if it will happens again in sept /oct..... there will be a line in it....

Monthly update from Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO):

YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO OBSERVATORY MONTHLY UPDATE
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 12:09 MDT (Wednesday, July 1, 2009 18:09 UTC)

YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO (CAVW#1205-01-)
44.43°N 110.67°W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m)
Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Aviation Color Code: GREEN

June 2009 Yellowstone Seismicity Summary

During the month of June 2009, 77 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone region. The largest event was a magnitude 3.3 on June 30 at 9:52 AM MDT, located about 15 miles east northeast of West Yellowstone, MT. This event was part of an ongoing small earthquake swarm that includes 25 events on June 30, beginning with the M3.3 The magnitudes during the swarm ranged from 3.0 to -0.2.

Earthquake activity in the Yellowstone region is at relatively normal background levels.

Ground Deformation Summary: Through June 2009, continuous GPS data show that uplift of the Yellowstone Caldera has slowed but may be continuing. The WLWY station, located in the northeastern part of the caldera, has undergone a total of ~23 cm of uplift since mid-2004. Its record can be found at:
pboweb.unavco.org...

The currently observed reduction in uplift rate may be related to seasonal changes related to snowmelt and groundwater recharge. In several of the past 5 years, such changes have caused decreased uplift or slight subsidence, but were followed later in the year by continued uplift. The general uplift of the Yellowstone caldera is of scientific importance and will continue to be monitored closely by YVO staff.

An article on the current uplift episode at Yellowstone and discussion of long-term ground deformation at Yellowstone and elsewhere can be found at: volcanoes.usgs.gov...

Hi all.

Well I thought today was going to be fairly boring (as in nothing major to note outside of noise & the usual construction stuff until I got to YPK (Parker Peak).

YPK 07:40 UTC there was a local event. Then there was some energetic activity at 12:05 UTC - 12:14 UTC and then again at 12:16 UTC - 12:25UTC.

Also at 06:59UTC most of the park sensors picked up the teleseism to the 6.0 quake in Panama.

I'll check again later.

M.

reply to post by Moshpet


Most of the "energetic" activity was probably due to human source - cars or something else.
Local earthquakes on webicorders have an almost instant attack, a flat spot if they're big enough to saturate the seismometer, and exponential decay.

it will be interesting to see if the sun spots lead to anything and if it effects things like quake activity in yellowstone etc.

I'm a big believer in how things great and small are interconnected... including non-events - lets hope

Originally posted by ressiv
I was moore thinking of sequence for the the events of much EQ like in dec/jan...... march/april...... now june and july....

if it will happens again in sept /oct..... there will be a line in it....

sorry that i havnt been on much lately but im dealing with huge legal issues.....


yeah id have to say that since the Dec , Jan swarm a smaller one occurs somthing like a circle around the park once every two months but last month there was a larger swarm as well. so to me it is a funky pattern and that we should pay close attention to.......

Originally posted by Shirakawa
reply to post by Moshpet

 

Most of the "energetic" activity was probably due to human source - cars or something else.
Local earthquakes on webicorders have an almost instant attack, a flat spot if they're big enough to saturate the seismometer, and exponential decay.

No offense dude, but seriously, put the following information into Google Earth, and tell me exactly what human source is going to be there.

YPK

Identifier: YPK
Name: Parker Peak, Yellowstone Park, WY
Latitude: 44° 43' 54.60"
Longitude: 109° 55' 19.19"
Elevation: 9,504' 6.9"

If you don't want to bother to look to look for yourself, I will tell you there are no freaking roads there, not to mention it is on a ridge line.

I swear you only think there is any kind of real seismic activity going on in the park if it shows up in the USGS site. If you read the report for last month even UoU/YVO recognized there were over a hundred micro-quakes.

Frankly I don't trust UoU's monitoring of the park, on the basis that they don't work on the weekends.

M.

Originally posted by Moshpet

No offense dude, but seriously, put the following information into Google Earth, and tell me exactly what human source is going to be there.

YPK

Identifier: YPK
Name: Parker Peak, Yellowstone Park, WY
Latitude: 44° 43' 54.60"
Longitude: 109° 55' 19.19"
Elevation: 9,504' 6.9"

If you don't want to bother to look to look for yourself, I will tell you there are no freaking roads there, not to mention it is on a ridge line.

Even better: I have downloaded seismic data from that period of time and tried to analyse it and I can tell you that the source of the signal is most certainly not geologic (by the way, don't you think that such energic signals would have been detected at least by nearby seismometers?)

Yes, you are right in saying it's not directly due to car traffic, given the remote location (but it's not that vehicles can't get there... an offroad car could easily reach that place). Also signals like those in spectrograms usually look like tones which fade in, then out.

After seeing them more in detail, I say that the "energic" signals you saw on YPK seismometer are probably due to poking by animals or humans (due to maintenance?). But again, definitely not of geologic origin.

I swear you only think there is any kind of real seismic activity going on in the park if it shows up in the USGS site. If you read the report for last month even UoU/YVO recognized there were over a hundred micro-quakes.

I assure you I don't.

The problem here is that you probably should learn how to better decipher seismograms/webicorders. But your situation is understandable since usually nothing special happens in Yellowstone and YVO doesn't release much information about what happens in the park (yes, here you're right).

If for example you followed Redoubt and its ongoing eruption like I did since January you would have learned a lot more about this matter, thanks also to AVO's openness to disclose information and data, and the volcano's very variable conditions over all these months.

About the micro-quakes in last month's report, wasn't there a mini earthquake swarm two months ago?

Frankly I don't trust UoU's monitoring of the park, on the basis that they don't work on the weekends.
M.

You are probably right about UoU, but seismometers are (almost) always active and cannot be easily manipulated to lie and/or show bogus data.
By the way, most of the AVO staff and people from University of Alaska Fairbanks who collaborate with AVO don't work on weekends either.

[edit on 2009/7/5 by Shirakawa]

Near as I can recollect without going and looking, there was a small swarm in March as well, they just did not give any specific dates.

As for YPP showing up on the other sensors.

YPP is furthest East of all the sensors, and pretty darned remote. YSB (Soda Butte), YMP (Mary Lake Plateau), YLA (Lake Butte), YTP (The Promontory) are the closest sensors. All are well beyond 10 miles from YPK so any events under .5-.9 and further east from YPK are not likely to show up very well.

Admittedly YPK is in a real good position to read the larger of events in the park, but there isn't anything East of YPK to help cross check small events with.

M.

Before someone claims Yellowstone is going to blow up because of Seismo activity at Old Faithful today....

Giantess Geyser began erupting this morning, and is responsible for the erratic seismograph readings in the Old Faithful area. Audible thumps were heard and felt from the collapsing steam bubbles deep within Giantess. I might add this is normal, and part of the experience -- in fact the seismo readings tipped off the geyser gazers around the world that Giantess was in eruption. Steam clouds and later observation confirmed it.

It will continue to erupt on and off for now or 72 hours. Durations are erratic as eruptions can last hours to days. The average is ~24 hours. It can be viewed on the live streaming cam from the Old Faithful Visitor Center.

It is not a continuous eruption, as it erupts ~3 to 5 minutes and pauses around 20 minutes before the next play. Seismo readings do not always match up to this, as eruptions deep in the pluming before it is seen at the surface.

Giantess Geyser is one of the largest active fountain geysers in the world. Bursts can reach anywhere between 50 to 200+ feet. Initial estimates this morning was 180feet+ bursts at the start of the eruption. As a matter of history, Giantess erupts 1 to 50 times a year.

Grats to the lucky visitors in the park who were there and saw it today.

[edit on 6-7-2009 by Not Authorized]

Originally posted by Not Authorized
Before someone claims Yellowstone is going to blow up because of Seismo activity at Old Faithful today....

Giantess Geyser began erupting this morning, and[...]

By the way, the big black signal on YFT and nearby webicorders is this morning's 6.1 earthquake from Alaska.

[edit on 2009/7/6 by Shirakawa]

what are you sum kind a quack. i just looked at usgs it shows 9 over a period of a week! nothin to see here!

I am no volcanic, earthquake specialist/researcher. But all I have to say is, whatever happens...happens. It is what it is. And IF it will blow, no man nor beast can predict when Mother Earth decides to do what she does best. It will happen, whether we (and any amount of technology) like it or not.