Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by Anmarie96


Well now, Toba as far as I am aware has potential. Some time ago I read that the dome in the lake has risen 450m since the eruption. See this article where they say it is still active and pressure is building.

Only the occasional slight tremor, or puff of smoke and a few hot springs give a tiny hint of the violence that is lurking below.

This is not extinct!

www.andaman.org...


[edit on 25/1/2010 by PuterMan]

This makes interesting reading to:

www.volcanolive.com...

[edit on 25/1/2010 by PuterMan]

We all know why a live broadcast is on a time delay.
It's to enable censorship of unwanted material.

Christmas 2008, with the huge swarm of earthquakes dotting the calendar during that period, opened up a few eyes to the fact that Yellowstone really could blow. Until then it was an acknowledged fact, but was only felt as a myth. Suddenly the swarm brought home the reality of this threat, and Homeland Security realised they needed a plan of action.

Now to play Devil's Advocate:

With America having fallen so deeply into a financial hole few states by then had the spare resources to cope with the millions of refugees who would need evacuating if the largest foreseeable eruption occurred. The outpouring of material could cover a large part of America, and the rest would have lowered fertility because of the dust cloud which would encircle Earth for years.

Under these circumstances only a limited number of people could survive, and filling the less affected areas with refugees would not enhance survival statistics, as there would not be enough food to go around. So what would be the point of forewarning or evacuating people? They might as well be left to die quickly, minimising the disruption to the rest of America. Enabling evacuation, allowing millions of homeless to overrun the country, would make survival more difficult for everyone else. And in the long run they would only end up dying slowly from starvation anyway.

I hope, if I was in control, I'd find a way to plan ahead and take care of everyone. However, without all the data, we have no way of knowing what would be possible. What we can be sure of is that disaster projections have been made, and various scenarios mapped out, so that Homeland Security knows precisely how many refugees to expect, and how many Americans could be fed, for a range of possible eruptions.

That's what "They Say" - I am of course in full agreement with you that it is NOT extinct - Toba is another Yellowstone but try to remember the location of Toba and the poor people there and their funds available for equiptment and such and being it is another yellowstone - hush, hush

reply to post by Anmarie96


Hey guys, Ive been a long time follower of this thread, and joined just so I could address the Toba issue. I have had a great deal of interest in this volcano ever since i started paying attention to yellowstone, considering that the resurgent dome at toba is considerably larger, i figured there was probably more going on there. It is most definietly still and active system. there are hot springs, and two volcanos rimming the caldera, so anything saying it is extinct is most definitely wrong. That being said, there is no one monitoring it, so its hard to say when it could blow, so anything we have is speculation. So this is where I get to the speculation Ive found online. Ive found several articles stating that not long after the quake in 04 that caused the tsunami in India, Toba experienced a number of 6+ harmonic quakes. I have nothing to verify that, just the words of the sites I have found (Ill attempt to find and post them in the future). If this is true though, then these quakes took place nearly 5 years ago to no result. Apply this to yellowstone and how little we really know about supervolcanoes, a harmonic tremor here could mean absolutely nothing. But then it could mean everything, so who knows?

Then again, the situation of these two volcanoes is different. Yellowstone is a hotspot, Toba is at a plate boundary, and since its last eruption about 3km of plate has subducted, providing easily enough magma to fuel an eruption. If one of these monsters blows, ill place my bet on Toba going first (imagine both at the same time ) It doesnt have any of the same patterns as yellowstone either, having erupted 860000 years ago, 700000, and 74000...

So again, this may not be something we can predict based on the earthquakes we are seeing.

How did those Scientists get on at Campi Flegri by the way (yet another VEI8 eruptional Caldera.)

The last I heard they had plans to tap into the source beneath the Sulphuric source to see what temperate readings they could measure, yet a similar attempt back in the 50's resulted in a small-localised eruption.
This area in Italy is also seeing ground Deformation and could likely go at any time, as theres no substantial measuring of the Lava Plume beneath it. Vesuvius steals the show just a few miles away in terms of Seismic and Volcanological data, when Campi Flegri poses a even greater danger to Naples and that region of Europe.

Goto

www.intlvrc.org...

See the link to the paper

"Is The Forecasting Of The Eruption Of The Yellowstone Supervolcano Possible?"


Interesting paper. What is most interesting is the graph from Waite and Smith (2001) showing the caldera rising and then falling after a massive earthquake swarm in 1985/1986.

[edit on 25-1-2010 by episode19]

TOBA

Now that was big! A signifigant extinction event. There's a bottleneck in our DNA because we were nearly wiped off the planet by TOBA! I've read, as little as only ten thousands survived the blast. It was probably closer to forty thousand. Nonetheless, it nearly killed us. But what makes it so special? It's not even really special in Indonesia because volcanoes are everwhere. Hundreds line areas of the Ring of Fire. So why is TOBA so special? One ingredient. Water.

Santorini (Thera), Krakatoa, Toba, all were obliterated. They exploded. Explosions. have you ever had the hot bacon fat exploded from water and the hot grease hits you in the chest. Explosions. In each case the island was destroyed. Early thinking thought that the chamber opened up and it swallowed the islands. No. Water inflated the magma chamber roof until it exploded.

Just like in my experiment.

www.youtube.com...

Almost forgot. Lots of water ontop of, and witin the crust of

[edit on 25-1-2010 by Robin Marks]

Over the last little while things have quited somewhat. Are we going to have a repeated preformance tonight? It seems, late in the evening we are having double events around 3 magnitude. They don't seem to have the distictive signature of a typical quake. As Shirakawa has shown time and time again, there are sometimes three quick bursts. This is atypical. I think.

This is for Shirakawa, What do you account for this rapid shuttering? That's they best way to put it. What's the official seismic explaination for what we are seeing? and seeing. I know were not looking at regular faults. Do you know of any study to explain the different ways fault move within a caldera?

And while I'm going. 1985 is coming up more and more in my mind. Everytime we think it's over it ain't. Close to 1300 quakes now, another couple days and we'll be half way there. And if there's no end for weeks, this could potentialyl be the largest swarm ever, if nothing changes and it continues in a 1985 timeframe. How's the culmulative Shirakawa? We must be closing in on total energy. How long until we get there? In this day and age when there's really nothing on television except sniping talk show hosts, the world is missing out on the most exciting show. The one with the highest stakes. While we watch, the world for the most part is oblivious.

Remarkable.

While we wait for Shirakawa's reply - and being INTLVRE was brought up - a few years back INTLVRC - Dr. Tromboli and his crew had posted on their upcoming events for the year a visit to study and research and such the goings on at Yellowstone - a few months later it was posted that the trip was cancelled due to lack of funds - I had been excited about the expedition and was quiet disapointed to hear they weren't going - so I offered Dr. Tromboli the funds to go and do the reseach as long as I could join them :-) (that was before my ex took me) but anyway - They turned me down - said - thanks but no thanks ------ Realy made me wonder who got a hold of them for them to turn down the large amount of funds offered. They are all in it together

I've been thinking about this whole issue of activity increasing at night. I can't think of any conditions that are really all that different at night, other than temperature.

Of course day/night temperature changes wouldn't be enough to have much effect on the hot stuff, but it would effect water. If water were trickling down into the faults (say, from the lake) would colder water cause more activity than warmer water?

Anybody want to make a temperature chart of the past week, compare it to the earthquake times and test this theory?

charts would be alot of work - but in short - overnight temp. would not drop the water temp. substantially just curface - - sorry

:-0 - I have been so distracted that I haven't followed anything other than Yellowstone today or the weather in my area - Over the past few days I was meaning to post how Long Valley was really on top of things with their info and data - daily reports, hands on information and such - I just checked in with their sight now -

volcano.wr.usgs.gov...

I am at a loss for words and soon hope to pick my jaw up off the floor

I don't know if any of you have followed Long Valley's page daily like my self - every day they gave defined quake activity ---- now the swarms there and they are cutting us off - breath - count - in through the nose out through the mouth - hey, I might need a paper bag

and please excuse any of my spelling errors -

Sup all Yellowstoners... (Yellowstoners, ha!)

Anyway, anyone up on GEE right now? I cannot get connection to two of three required servers, IRIS and COBRA/SCEPP for GEE to work. That's kind of unusual- just wondering if their servers are full, down, or what... No GEE make TA unhappy.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


I have GEE going just fine at the moment. Another small quake came through a few minutes ago, probably a .8 or so.

I know you all weren't too enthralled by the whole temperature thing, but I think there is at least a correlation with the strongest activity. I made some charts.

Temperature highs and lows, from Wunderground.com. Argh, pretend the legend says "degrees Fahrenheit"

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5bff5dba8983.gif[/atsimg]


Magnitude 2.5+ quakes, days are 7am to 7pm, (local time) nights are 7pm to 7am. Can't find data for the 17th, and daytime data for the 18th. (Anybody know where to find quakes older than one week?) 25th is not yet complete.

My legend got cut off but nights are in purple, days in blue.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5a0f3e78c642.gif[/atsimg]

As you can see, the most vigorous quakes occurred on the 20th, which was also the coldest day/night of the swarm. Activity picked up again last night when temps dipped again.

Just a correlation, but I find it interesting.




[edit on 25-1-2010 by quakewatcher]

Quakewatcher - great graphs, thanks for the effort and sharing

Question - what is the difference between the quakes registering on the recorders and the longer rumble-like event recordings? I assume they are different types of movement - but what? TIA

the rumble-like stuff could be a lot of things.
wind, traffic, herd of bison moving and so on.

Also the "mine" stuff, as already explained by Shirakawa, shows up as rumble-like on the graphs. There was one at 16:00

Hope this is what you meant with rumble-like, sorry if I am wrong :-(

Cheers - the "rumble" I was interested in was the one showing c. half midnight on current chart - long blue event. Looks to continue for a good 4-5 mins.

Looked at the YMR chart

We have a small quake, around 1.0 and after that some rumble. I presume that's the one you are talking about. (between 09-12)

Not sure what it exactly is but this kind of stuff often apears on YMR chart.
YMR is calibrated at 125.00 microvolts so a lot of "natural" elements are going to appear on it. My guess is wind here or incoming reading from an earthquake somewhere else in the world. Nothing to worry about I would say.

Well, when dirt is infused with frost, it expands (and becomes harder)... and further cooling causes more expansion, creating possible tension in the faults?

Dunno.. very odd. but I hope it calms down.

[edit on 1/26/2010 by Pharyax]