Whats going on at yellowstone?

Strange - a 2.7 registered via eQuake, it's on the seismo's but has now disappeared from USGS

okay folks - i'm on my sloowww dial up here now - please post your thinging and information

Thinking*

[edit on 1-2-2010 by Anmarie96]

appeared some wave went through the park

[edit on 1-2-2010 by Anmarie96]

I guess everyone have heard about Mt. Tarawera which is located 24 kilometres south-east of Rotorua? In the days before Mt Tarawera erupted there was an increase in hot spring activity, but otherwise there were no warning signs.

Earthquakes at Yellowstone have been universally attributed to fault movement rather than magmatic activity by the USGS. Maybe because they do not see any correlative volcanic/magmatic symptoms, such as pronounced, short-term bulging (what about the bulge beneath Yellowstone Lake), changes in the hydrothermal/magmatic system (Old Faithful isn't so faithful anymore).

I see it as a little bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario: an earthquake can trigger an eruption if the system is posed at the brink of an eruption and conversely, magmatic movement can trigger earthquakes because the crust has to accommodate the new material.

Anyway, I do believe that vulcanologists are becoming very skilled at predicting the likelihood of an eruption. Still, a number of barriers remain. It's very difficult to pinpoint exactly when an eruption will happen. Often, moving magma doesn't result in an eruption, but instead cools below the surface.

What make me concerned is that it seems like the quakes are starting to become more shallow. That can't be a good sign.
Since 2010/01/31 19:49:34 the M2+ quakes are located from 4km to 7,2km beneath the surface, while they was located 9 to 10km beneath the surface before.

I wish I could find out how to show pictures in my post to better illustrate what I'm saying.


[edit on 2/2/2010 by Roald]

okay, another question for those educated enough to answer!

These waves occur at 23:15 in the teton range on MOOW and FLWY

MOOW

FLWY

They happen approx 45 min after th 6.2 quake...and from what I found, only showed a little on YMR, so I don't think it's from that quake.

What are your thoughts on the cause?

Thanks in advance!

The theoretical p-wave travel time for that 6.2 is only 13 min 44 seconds, to get to Golden Colorado. So I dunno. Yeah, it looks scary but what would HT be doing in the Tetons?

reply to post by quakewatcher


Here is some interesting info on the Tetons:

geologist study active fault

Wiki info

So it is the largest active fault in Wyoming, and the range itself was formed from ancient magma. What a beautiful, fascinating place!

reply to post by Shirakawa


Just wanted to say thank you for all the informative posts you have made in this thread (actually because of this thread and lots of googling I found this forum)

I am far from an expert on this subject, but most of the information presented here can be checked and verified and that is really a big plus for me. I don't think we will see a super eruption in our lifetime, but then again I don't think the powers that be would let us know in adequate time. That's why I think this thread is invaluable.

About the Tetons 16:15/23:15

duration around 23 mins and not linked to the actual swarm in west YS or the Papoa quake.

No real idea what happened there and not going to speculate, even if it does look a bit "bizarre".

Originally posted by Robin Marks
Shirakawa how long would it take the S waves to get to Yellowstone from Paupa New Guinea? Remember on webicorder, so I'm not really seeing it on any stations in the park. However I think I see it come across YMR.

This is the calculation for YMR station:
Link

Do you get anything from YFT?

No. YFT appears to be offline.

And respectfully I will be the devil's advocate and argue that this swarm cannot be considered normal or common. I've made the point before that of the 90 or so since 1995, the majority have been outside the caldera and only around 13-14 inside. I don't think all swarms are created equal. The count includes swarms within Yellowstone National Park. The majority of the chamber is under the caldera and to the northeast. The uplift areas basically show where the chamber is actively fracturing the crust.

If it's the second largest since 1985, it's certainly unusual. But swarms are common. Also, from the pdf I often linked:

6. Discussion
6.1. Swarm identification

Using the definition that a swarm had to contain at least 30 events,
∼39% of the recorded earthquakes in the Yellowstone region are
associated with swarms. Of the 69 swarms identified, 54 (78.3%) are
located in the region north and northwest of the Yellowstone caldera
while 14 (20.3%) are located within or at the Yellowstone caldera
boundary (Fig. 4).

Originally posted by Roald
What make me concerned is that it seems like the quakes are starting to become more shallow. That can't be a good sign.
Since 2010/01/31 19:49:34 the M2+ quakes are located from 4km to 7,2km beneath the surface, while they was located 9 to 10km beneath the surface before.

This isn't a good sign only when there's magma rising to the surface, and at the moment there isn't.

reply to post by westcoast

reply to post by Nidwin


If you check the calculation linked above (for YMR) you can see that the L waves (those which cause those very long period signals on certain stations) arrive at about that time.

[edit on 2010-2-2 by Shirakawa]

You're right Shirakawa,
It's caused by the L wave from the Papoa quake.

Both Teton stations are at 100.00 microvolts(forgot to check it before answering) compared to 125.00 for YMR which explain the difference in apearance on the graph.

My mistake :-)

reply to post by Lil Drummerboy


PLANNED MAINTENANCE: Wednesday Feb 3, 2010 thru Thursday Feb 4, 2010 We will be upgrading a database server on the nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov website. During this outage, Site data will not be updated and Peaks, Water Quality and Groundwater Levels data will NOT be available. All real-time data will continue to be available at waterdata.usgs.gov... WaterWatch maps will continue to be updated.

USGS 06186500 Yellowstone River at Yellowstone Lk Outlet YNP.

reply to post by Anmarie96


It occurred last year too.
I think it's normal routine.

In case anybody is wondering, the signal at around 17:15 UTC on most Yellowstone seismic stations is another mine blast from a coal mine south of Gillette, WY.

something wierd (really big?) is happening now on H17A...showing up as a smaller quake on B207 and B205

check it out!

Edit it add: well...not sure what that is. It occurs at 17:40, as what looks like one big spike. I would think its an anomally but it shows as a small quake at the other stations.

One more time....I zoomed in on it and I'm thinking that maybe it was a glitch. It seemed to go off-line during the quake and kick back in right at the end of it, causing a spike. I dunno.
[edit on 2-2-2010 by westcoast]

[edit on 2-2-2010 by westcoast]

reply to post by westcoast


I'm not sure what is that, but it could be the usual local vehicle noise.
It's not a big signal at all. EDIT: but that's not the thinh you were talking about.

EDIT: about the spike on H17A,
I've checked and there's a glitch where two earthquakes should have occurred.
They were small, though. I don't know why this happened.

By the way,
YVO have updated their daily earthquake chart:

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

And also the total earthquake count:

As of February 2, 2010 9:00 AM MST there have been 1,660 located earthquakes in the recent Yellowstone National Park swarm.

[edit on 2010-2-2 by Shirakawa]

[edit on 2010-2-2 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Shirakawa


USGS has posted their daily swarm update page

volcano.wr.usgs.gov...

What is the composition of the rock where these quakes are occurring?

This may be totally irrelevant, but I'm from New England and I used to have clam bakes... We'd dig a hole, put charcoal down there, let it get white, and then put granite stones on top of the charcoal... We'd layer food on seaweed placed on the stones, then bury it in the sand...

After one of these clambakes once, the tide had come in and a rush of water ran over the hole, partially filling it. The granite stones were still hot and hissed and cracked violently, sputtering for a minute or two after the invasion of water...

My question is this... With the heat of the plume and the amount of precipitation (snow, ice, rain,) is it possible that a water source (underground spring, runoff, seeping) is meeting heated rock in a similar water?

Probably crazy, but might explain why rock is cracking? Totally offbase?

reply to post by pantangele


As for the rock composition where the swarm is occurring I'm not informed (rhyolite as it's within the caldera probably?), but as far as I know it's possible to recognize when earthquakes are tectonic and when explosive due to hydrothermal activity. I personally don't know how it's done, but YVO should and if earthquakes were due to these reasons they would have probably wrote in their swarm page that they (or at least some of them) were hydrothermal in nature.

I doubt that precipitations from recent weather could move so quickly (if they could at all) from the surface to several kilometers underground, though.

[edit on 2010-2-2 by Shirakawa]

My problem as one who is admittedly not well versed in this field is intuiting how thousands of quakes can be caused by cracks and faults... In my narrow understanding of the subject, faults slip then settle... Sometimes after an energy release they'll slip again and settle again... But thousands of times? Don't understand how that could happen through plates slipping against one another... It's my fault (pun intended) that I don't get this, because I'm not very well educated on the subject... But my mind is struggling to think of a real world example of what could be happening down there that's causing so much activity.

reply to post by pantangele


It's volanic rock so it will react exaclty like other rocks. They've been heat tempered. But with that being said, anything can become brittle when expanding and contracting over time (Minnestoa bridge collapse), but glass withstands heat differentials very well. But even they have limits. I thought the Lake swarm resembled shattering glass in slow motion. That's why they didn't get harmonic tremors during that massive injection in 2004. The movement is in slow motion. It's like heating something and the heat transfers slowly throught the medium. It's not a sudden rush of mama travelling up through a dyke like water rushing through a sewer.

The magma chamber is not all one big lava blob. It's differing zones of compostion and temperatures. Even the dissolved gases would be different place to place. This means flux. I'm wondering if the moon period and redistubed gases and moved heat from one location to another. If your frying pan isn't centered, when you move it, another area becomes hot and your food cooks unevenly. The crust above the new heat source would heat rather quickly, and then when cold water entered from aquifer, there may be heat/cold induced fracturing. If a cold water source broke through a wall and entered a newly heated area there could be a failure of a fault and that's what we have. A failure of a fault. If the fluid migration was slow enough, it MAY miss detection. Maybe if existing flows were sped up or had a new, colder source. I'm not going to reread this, if I screwed something up, I'll live with it.

Is the mining underground? Or moutaintop? Is the mining activity showing up in constinent manner on all webicorders?

I almost forgot, someone a bunch of pages back mentioned that Old Fathful is missing eruptions. As unscientific as it is, I've been watching when I could and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. That is until today. There's bison roaming around down by observation area. So quick have a look. Strange personal coincidence, I was telling my eldest son to watch the movie Where the Buffalo roam because he likes Bill Murray. And now buffalo (bison) are roaming for real. I haven't noticed any strange behaviours. Sorry I know it's only funny to me.


[edit on 2-2-2010 by Robin Marks]