Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by sad_eyed_lady


I like them slipping in that part about encouraging people to fill in the "did you feel it" pages on the USGS site.

They definitely are trying to figure out how far it is ranging beyond their sensors.

Other than that, not as informative as I was expecting.

at least Homeland security is informed now...

The National Park Service in Yellowstone has been kept fully informed of the ongoing seismic activity via electronic means and by phone contacts with the University of Utah and the U.S. Geological Survey USGS). The Wyoming Office of Homeland Security is reviewing Earthquake Response Plans and monitoring seismic activity.

Someone explained here that it is not likely to have a small eruption, as the rest of the caldera would somehow also be affected if a small eruption happens.
I think that this would be the key - is it possible that some amount of lava is moving, but that it is not connected to the most of it, and will not cause a big eruption? Could we have something like Hawaii?



[edit on 1-1-2009 by greshnik]

Why is the black line missing on the current seismic readings?

www.quake.utah.edu...

Check the water flow from the lake. It peaks with the Harmonic Tremors. This means there is deformation under the lake during the harmonic cycles.

Yellowstone Lake Outflow

reply to post by greshnik

I think if you refer to the research report that is linked within the post by 1SawSomeThings, it will help to explain the situation. Check pages 24 to 32 for starters... According to the experts there are several possibilities in respect of eruptions, with a smaller one (relatively speaking) being more likely than a big one.

Regarding our concerns for the Lake region where the current quake swarm is located, they say in this report on p. 32:

The north half of Yellowstone Lake and the adjacent area has long-been known as a site of large explosion craters and hosts an active liquid-dominated geothermal system (Muffler and others, 1971; Morgan and others, 1977; Otis and others, 1977; Wold and others, 1977; Morgan and others, 2003b). Besides the explosion craters listed in table 3, numerous small sublacustrine explosion craters have been identified within linear fissure zones by high-resolution imaging (Johnson and others, 2003; Morgan and others, 2003b; Morgan and others, in press-a). Johnson and others (2003) and Morgan and others (2003b) considered domal areas on the lake floor to be the most likely sites of future hydrothermal explosions. These areas are manifested by gently warped areas of the lake floor having at most 30 meters of apparent uplift (Morgan and others, in press-b).

(Bolding and italics included by me. Refer to the report as mentioned above for the complete text.)

Many thanks to 1SawSomeThings for posting the link to this report!

Interesting that which can be seen in discharge rates peaking around the middle of this. Interestingly, looking at the last 60 days it has been mostly above average. Before the snowfall and the majority of winter, that would be due to Rain amounts I expect, but now could be indicative of something.

reply to post by JustMike


Well, yes, I didn't really believe that explanation when I wrote it down. It would probably be a technical problem though. A couple of days ago I couldn't get on the Seis.utah.edu domain at all, may have been noticed by others. It could just be a reaction to large bandwidth usage of us.

I've had the live streaming video on Old Faithful going for a while. Camera was looking at the geyser but now it is out of the frame and has been for some time now - maybe an hour? Now I'm just looking at the snow on the ground directly in front of the camera. The regular web cam has been refreshing regularly but no activity. Old Faithful not so faithful? There was a crowd earlier too but now not a soul.

Video: Volcano Worries in Yellowstone, Eruption in Russia

www.nationalledger.com...

reply to post by Penster


The regular webcam says its still about 40 minutes till the next old faithful show.

That would explain no people there.

Not sure about the live stream though, somebody could have bumped something.

Has LKWY station stopped updating again?
It seems stuck at 09:10 MST.

Yeah - I'm keeping an eye on that one too. Had it up for a couple hours. Haven't been to sleep since yesterday morning so maybe I nodded off for a second and missed it!

Nevermind - camera is looking at the geyser again. I want to see if anything odd happens.

Originally posted by greshnik
Someone explained here that it is not likely to have a small eruption, as the rest of the caldera would somehow also be affected if a small eruption happens.

I think that this would be the key - is it possible that some amount of lava is moving, but that it is not connected to the most of it, and will not cause a big eruption? Could we have something like Hawaii?

This is correct. The pressure is so great inside that the whole thing would explode, sort of like a balloon. From my knowledge, all the lava is connected so a small eruption wouldn't be possible. This type of volcano is a lot different than others. This caldera volcano would be more like a bomb than a fountain.

JustMike, thanks.

I still think that there are different possibilities, but that everyone is mostly concerned about the worst case scenario. Even if a small amount of lava shows on surface, it would be a big concern for US, as people would be worrying.

Hello everyone, happy new year, new member here glad to be added. So has anyone ever been to Mt St. Helens? I have, and to see the power of that is incredible. Now just imagine a Yellowstone eruption. From some of the History Channel and Natgeo info out there, Yellowstone is the largest landmine in the world. And to reply to the (2012 nut) if at least 50% of the info you have received is correct, we are in for a wild ride. Preparation at this point is key to survival. The wait and see will be exciting and terrible.

well thats it.... all helio's have stoped.....

and apparently
all recieved more or less the same signal at ~09:45 MST
that's weird.
was the cable broken / burned?

This thread is huge now, so I may have missed it if this was posted, but I found some blog where some dude is showing a picture of what harmonic tremors look like on the U Of Utah's seismographs. I don't know how reliable he is, but he says that the waves that we see about 2/3 down on the graph are harmonic tremors:

Harmonic Tremors - 2/3 down

Here's his blog:
www.movermike.com...

So far, it doesn't seem like there's been any.

edit - grammar


[edit on 1/1/2009 by Curious_Agnostic]

Originally posted by ghaleon12
This is correct. The pressure is so great inside that the whole thing would explode, sort of like a balloon. From my knowledge, all the lava is connected so a small eruption wouldn't be possible.

Yes it is possible. And indeed probably more likely too. The last eruption was 70,000 years ago, with the previous "Super Eruption" 640,000 years ago.

Some of the eruptions were approximately the size of the devastating 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and several were much larger. The most recent volcanic eruption at Yellowstone, a lava flow on the Pitchstone Plateau, occurred 70,000 years ago.

And so it would be defined as a fairly large eruption, even if it were 'small' by Yellowstone's standard, as Pinatubo was a VEI 6, while the 1980 St Helens was a VEI 5.


reply to post by Curious_Agnostic



That looks to be the closest thing to given examples of it on any of the USGS sites, so it could well be what we are looking for. In which case, we haven't seen it here. Which is a damn good thing.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by apex]