Recent events happening at Grand Teton (South of Yellowstone)

Ok, I am getting some really weird readings in GEE at TA.I17A, which is in northern Grand Teton National Park, south of Yellowstone lake, and have been for the last several days, so I wanted to seek some other opinions.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/246943ccde5f.jpg[/atsimg]

It could be the station has gone down, due to the repetition in patterns there, but 730 microns/sec is pretty sizable. This "pattern" just started before I posted this, but over the last few days I have been registering many events at this station.

The FLWY webicorder in northern Grand Teton has been going nuts too:

www.quake.utah.edu...

And look at the last few days...

It does not appear to be noise, and the events don't seem quite big enough to register at LWKY for the most part, but geez. Can't help but post this. Anyone feel like this is man-made activity, or what...? Or could this be connected to the ever changing, complex subsystem under the Yellowstone area?

[edit on Tue Aug 18th 2009 by TrueAmerican]

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Need to call whomever administers that station and ask if there is an equipment issue, or maybe you can e-mail. Shouldn't take more than couple to track someone down who would know.

I'm thinking we need more Intel on the site set-up...above or below ground...

Recent Weather trends...

Surrounding Urban settlements...

Surrounding site comparisons/readings...

It wouldn't surprise me though if there was some flow movement...

I saw a ~M4 in Nevada *poof* and then the ~M4 in Colo...

Connected?

Edit: Any talk on the Yellowstone thread of this?

[edit on 8/18/2009 by Hx3_1963]

reply to post by Hx3_1963


Yeah man, I saw those quakes too- they seemed odd. But seriously, check out the FLWY webi- something is up... Could be flows...

As to the GEE station readings: The TA network is a Transportable Array, and part of the Earthscope Project. Those are all above ground, from what I have read. And that pattern has remained consistent now in GEE, and continues. So as far as that station goes, I am going to write it off as a malfunction for now. But that still does not explain the webicorders and all the events I have been getting at that station up to this malfunction.

reply to post by TrueAmerican
Ok...something to keep an eye on fer sure then...

YS/Teton local Seismometers
quake.utah.edu...


www.isthisthingon.org...




Seems activity is picking up in Cali/Nev now also... Hmmm...

quake.usgs.gov...
quake.utah.edu...

[edit on 8/18/2009 by Hx3_1963]

reply to post by Hx3_1963


Yep, thanks... I just wanted to remind people though that this is south of where you are referring to, in Grand Teton national park. The webi map for these is here:

www.quake.utah.edu...

And the station that is concerning me is FLWY, in the north part of that. That station is not listed in the links you are posting- lol, not trying to be argumentative, trust me- just wanna make sure people are looking in the right place.

www.quake.utah.edu...

Once there, click on the past days and look at that activity. That seems beyond wind noise to me, unless there have been hurricanes there!

Is there anything being picked up in the nearby stations? If something was going on with that continuity and magnitude there should be something popping-up on other stations, no?

Is it normal for an activity to have a quasi repetitive pattern like that?
If no other stations are showing I would say malfunction.

reply to post by jtma508


Well, that's just it. For the last several weeks I have been picking up a lot of activity around Yellowstone Lake, but none of it seems to register at the exact same time, leading me to believe most of that activity is man made- and someone did point out there was construction going on in the park- which is probably the cause of most of it.

As to this activity at Grand Teton, I am not sure. It may be more construction, but looking at the FLWY webi, it does not appear so to me.

When you have a bunch of man made activity going on, and then microquakes interspersed in the middle of that, it can be pretty tricky to separate them out on both the webicorders and in GEE as well. I am doing my best to recognize the signatures of man made stuff, but some of it is questionable. And I must say that most of the activity I was seeing at TA.I17A in Gee up to this malfunction point looked more like quakes. Small quakes, but quakes.

Looking at YPP (Pitchstone Plataea) Which is the closest YS sensor, and then checking the Teaton sensors there is no signal matching the one at FLWY.

Going back over the past few days of FLWY, some of it bears a striking resemblance to to WMR (Madison River). Which is the sensor that picks up the construction in YS the most. (if you look back a few months on YMR you will see what I mean.)

IF construction is going on within 100' of the sensor it'd get washed out big time wise by the heavy machinery. I would suggest looking at GPS elevation data to see if the signals are getting bollixed there too on that sensor.

That and sending a email to check.

M.

Originally posted by Moshpet
Looking at YPP (Pitchstone Plataea) Which is the closest YS sensor, and then checking the Teaton sensors there is no signal matching the one at FLWY.

Yes, the activity appears to be localized to that area, north of Jackson Lake.

Going back over the past few days of FLWY, some of it bears a striking resemblance to to WMR (Madison River). Which is the sensor that picks up the construction in YS the most. (if you look back a few months on YMR you will see what I mean.)

So that look like wind noise to you, aside from the obvious events? I remember a while back when we were looking at some others where the wind could get pretty brutal and saturate the webicorders. But checking wind stats for today, it did not seem excessive either- or at least enough to cause what we are seeing on the FLWY readout which is at 100 microns.

IF construction is going on within 100' of the sensor it'd get washed out big time wise by the heavy machinery. I would suggest looking at GPS elevation data to see if the signals are getting bollixed there too on that sensor.

That and sending a email to check.

Well GPS station P170 is on an upswing, but nothing out of the ordinary, it seems:

pboweb.unavco.org...

P170 Location Map

Data Archive

Yeah maybe an email is in order...

I was about to look in detail at the data from that seismometer, but it appears that public access to the IRIS network (and therefore most stations available in GEE) is down, so no luck for now.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican

Going back over the past few days of FLWY, some of it bears a striking resemblance to to WMR (Madison River). Which is the sensor that picks up the construction in YS the most. (if you look back a few months on YMR you will see what I mean.)

So that look like wind noise to you, aside from the obvious events? I remember a while back when we were looking at some others where the wind could get pretty brutal and saturate the webicorders. But checking wind stats for today, it did not seem excessive either- or at least enough to cause what we are seeing on the FLWY readout which is at 100 microns.

IF construction is going on within 100' of the sensor it'd get washed out big time wise by the heavy machinery. I would suggest looking at GPS elevation data to see if the signals are getting bollixed there too on that sensor.

Yeah maybe an email is in order...

I suggested more that it looked like some of the construction noise I had seen at YMR. It's not a wind / noise signal I am used too to seeing, if that helps to make it any clearer.

Hopefully its a mystery that doesn't take an act of Congress to sort out

M.

reply to post by Moshpet


Back in the 90's I was in PA listening to a radio program - don't remember the name - but a couple of pilots called in. One said he had seen construction of what he called "barracks" and said it looked like what many call today a "FEMA camp". He said he tried to access this area by ground and found that section of the park blocked by road.

Another pilot called from AK saying that 2 rail lines had been added to the one going into Denali Park. He couldn't figure out what that was for.

What kind of construction could make these graphs?

Heavy duty road resurfacing, especially the kind that chews up the old road surface for ease of removal. Then you add in road graders, rolling equipment, jack hammers, water trucks, then the resurfacing crews doing their bits. Now if they have to remove old cement road surfaces... just a few jack hammers going for days on end would do the job.

Any bridge that would have to be removed would likely have all sorts of demolition noise/work going on with it at well.

I doubt it's for any super secret purpose, more than likely the park system is doing some work due to a washed out road or so on.

Besides, if you really wanted to hide something, putting it near any major road, or national park is a poor way to do it. It's also in a area with heavy snow fall during the winter, so if it's for a secret base or FEMA Camp, it's sited poorly.

M.

[edit on 18-8-2009 by Moshpet]

So I've checked the data in detail and it appears that the seismometer has moments of malfunctioning. The data showed in the screenshot in the opening post is 100% noise.

reply to post by TrueAmerican



I am about 100-150 or so miles from that area, haven't felt any seismic activity and haven't heard anything about any construction around the park, but there could be for all we know.

Originally posted by Shirakawa
So I've checked the data in detail and it appears that the seismometer has moments of malfunctioning. The data showed in the screenshot in the opening post is 100% noise.

Hmm, the screenshot is in GEE obviously of station TA.I17A... And it is a repeated pattern virtually identical. It came up like that from out of nowhere, and maintained that pattern for quite a while. I really feel like that seismometer is malfunctioning... Because if it wasn't, we'd be seeing other signals mixed in with it.

So what's your take on what the FLWY webicorder has been doing over the last several days? Is that what you are saying is noise? I was a bit unclear about that in your post. Did you reference times of this noise with reported wind velocities?

To all, I appreciate you helping me figure this out!

reply to post by TrueAmerican


I'm pretty sure that what's happening with TA.I17A is "just" an occasional malfunctioning. The weird signal looks and sounds (with data to sound conversion) like pure noise and starts/ends abruptly. It does not appear caused by seismic waves, either geologically, atmospherically or artificially induced.

I have also checked data from FLWY from the last 9 hours. At a first look from the webicorder its signal seemed like a combination of human activity (mainly cars, like on Yellowstone) and wind. After looking at the data in more detail, I'm not sure anymore. It doesn't seem like human activity as it's too much repetitive (although with some natural variability) and it goes on through the night. Also it doesn't look like atmospherically induced activity either.

It could simply be that this seismometer is responding differently to wind than other ones and that it's subject due to its location from sudden bursts of it. If it was geologic activity I'd expect at small earthquakes to show up too as well, but I haven't seen any.

reply to post by Shirakawa


lol, well while you seem to be doubting more that it is wind noise on FLWY, the more I look at it the more I think it is a combination of wind noise and telemetry interference. Reasons:

1) It is pretty spiky looking, as opposed to typical, wider harmonic tremor or quake type displays

2) It looks very much like the sample provided here:



www.quake.utah.edu...

Add wind noise to telemetry interference, and it would seem to match pretty close to what we are seeing here:

www.quake.utah.edu...

Telemetry noise (like the above from YPP - Pitchstone Plateau, WY) can be caused by the buildup of ice on the station's antenna. Sometimes the telemetry link between the field station and the recording lab experiences interference. Such noise is usually easy to distinguish from earthquake-generated signals because the noise is often "spikey" in appearance.

Although in this case the telemetry interference would not be due to icing. Maybe it has to do with solar activity interference, since a lot of that has been going on lately?