Yellowstone Quake Swarm Ongoing- Produces M4.5 Quake

a reply to: TrueAmerican

Can you link me the USGS GPS position monitor data sites?
I managed to misplace them and I wanted to look at the uplift data since Saturday if they had it plotted.
Thanks for all the hard work and it will be interesting to see if there is any elevation chanke like there was in the lake.

Mosh.

Thanks TA, long long time lurker here and YS always brought me back. Nice of you to keep us updated man

originally posted by: dianajune
I'd sure like to have Michio Kaku's take on all of this!

Oh he said we'll die here in the US
if it's "the big one Elizabeth"

Hmm. Seismic activity just picked up again in the last 20 minutes at Yellowstone. Looks like same general area as the main swarm, east of Hebgen Lake. Nothing big yet, probably not much over M2, but lots of them coming in fast. Looks like this swarm is going to last a while.

Keep refreshing this, and you'll see what I mean:
isthisthingon.org...

Definitely an uptick in activity.

Norris is rising again. It was stalled over the last few months, but now is back to uplifting. And, I think it's connected to this swarm. I lost my link for one of the deformation sites. The one on the YVO page is not exactly real time, but it's good enough to see the movement. Ah, stupid me. I went and check the other GPS stations that were uplifting last year. Recently, they had stopped rising and even falling. That trend has stopped and at the same time as this swarm started, the caldera has gone on the rebound. hmmm

The whole Wyoming network that's run by University of Utah and that covers Yellowstone has been down for hours and hours, leaving us YS quake watchers scrambling for other close by networks to monitor. Not good. And especially after seeing some questionable long period signals in West Yellowstone on station YWB- and more than once in the last few days. I think it might have been wind noise, but those frequencies were awfully low- and a bit suspect. Strange how the network goes out right about now.

But it is not the first time the WY network has gone down, and won't be the last. There are still a few other stations at the lake on other networks, but I got nothing close to YWB where I saw those signatures. Grrr.

Ok so, some clarification after I received a response to an email. The WY network is actually sending data, so the scientists are seeing it, but IRIS (the data warehouse, basically) is for some reason not relaying it. Could be system maintenance or something. Notice that at isthisthingon.org, the data stops around 7:00 UTC or before. Same just about for my data from IRIS.

In the meantime, the YVO has released a monthly update:

YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO OBSERVATORY MONTHLY UPDATE
U.S. Geological Survey
Saturday, July 1, 2017, 8:56 AM MDT (Saturday, July 1, 2017, 14:56 UTC)

YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO (VNUM #325010)
44°25'48" N 110°40'12" W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m)
Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN

Seismicity
During June 2017, the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, responsible for the operation and analysis of the Yellowstone Seismic Network, reports 1171 earthquakes were located in the Yellowstone National Park (YNP) region. The largest event was a light earthquake of magnitude 4.4 on June 16, at 06:48 PM MDT, located about nine miles north northwest of West Yellowstone, MT. The earthquake was reported felt in the towns of Gardiner and West Yellowstone, MT. This earthquake is part of an energetic sequence of earthquakes in the same area that began on June 12.

June seismicity in Yellowstone was marked by four distinct clusters of episodic earthquakes:

1) An energetic swarm of 1027 earthquakes, ~six miles north of West Yellowstone, MT, began June 12 and is ongoing, including the largest event of the month on June 16 (magnitude 4.4). This swarm also consists of five earthquakes in the magnitude 3 range and 72 earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range.

2) 41 events occurred in a small swarm ~14 miles east northeast of West Yellowstone, MT, with swarm activity occurring June 14 and 15. The largest earthquake of the swarm (magnitude 2.3) occurred June 14, at 07:39 AM MDT ~14 miles east northeast of West Yellowstone, MT. This swarm includes two earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range.

3) A small swarm of 22 earthquakes, ~14 miles south southwest of Mammoth, WY, took place on June 1 and 2 (UTC), with the largest event (magnitude 2.6) occurring June 1, at 08:29 PM MDT. This swarm includes 3 earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range.

4) A small swarm of 13 earthquakes, ~16 miles east northeast of West Yellowstone, MT, occurred June 13. The largest earthquake (magnitude 1.7) occurred June 13, at 07:14 AM MDT ~16 miles east northeast of West Yellowstone, MT.

Earthquake sequences like these are common and account for roughly 50% of the total seismicity in the Yellowstone region.

Yellowstone earthquake activity is currently at elevated levels compared with typical background activity.

Ground deformation
Monitored locations within the Yellowstone caldera continue to slowly subside. Uplift north of the caldera, centered near the Norris Geyser Basin continues at a low rate. Behavior is similar to the past several months. Current deformation patterns at Yellowstone remain within historical norms.

So 4 separate swarms in June, in different locations. Just another day in the park, I suppose.

if national security is in stake (with YS it is) you can expect everything....
ofcourse nothing to worry...situation is fully under controle..
and by time they will inform us if there is any danger..
just closing web for amateurs to prevent panic-reactions.:-)....a reply to: TrueAmerican

It's a long weekend. I think they took it off line on purpose.
Oops, too concise.
I'll write more then... I'm sure everything is fine here. Nothing to look at. Go ahead and make your plans to visit the park and celebrate America.

Now I am sure, if anything is brewing in the future, they will not release any real-time data. I don't think at the moment they are hiding anything. This is censorship, and the control over the message if anything so develop quickly. They are obviously wondering if they go to the cottage, will some dumb ass post the data and start a rumour or panic.

Remember, it won't blow up until the eclipse.

EDIT

I think they are coming back online. Maybe a storm blew by. I am too lazy to check

originally posted by: Robin Marks

Remember, it won't blow up until the eclipse.

Perfect, I'm right in the path of the eclipse as well.
The population is supposed to double here during that week.
I see that Long Valley has had more recorded EQ's than Yellowstone in the last 7 days as well.

Really curious about the seismos being down...

The folks at VolcanoCafe blog are pretty certain the the magma reservoir underneath Yellowstone is mostly solid and therefore not eruptible. They think the hotspot there has moved on more toward Snake River and that Yellowstone is in the protracted process of dying. It takes a long time for that volume of magma to cool down.

On May 18th, 1980, Jimmy Carter's boys, quarantined any news that St. Helens had blown her top, until the big black ash cloud was over our heads, here on the Idaho border. This caused a ton of grief for my neighbors, who were told to go home from a mud bog race in Coeur d' Alene, Id. and tried to ride a motorcycle through the middle of the ash plume. They were stranded in a stalled camper trailer for about two and a half days. Those trailer folks let them in, being good Samaritans. That Sheriff sent everyone home from the race event, but wouldn't tell anyone why.

That stupid Sheriff could have asked if anyone was going home to the South of Coeur d' Alene, and then got them aside to tell them to find a motel in his town. This was Dante's Peak, for real. This is your Gov't at work, protecting you, from you.

Latest Update:
Data is flowing again from IRIS, so I'm back in business.

The main swarm has died down considerably today. There's still a little bit of lagging small seismicity, but it is still consistently less than M2, and less frequent. Things can change in a second at YS though, so I've still got the spectro up and watching.

Hmm, now this is curious... We just had an abrupt change in the location of the seismicity, with a shift towards the southeast of the main swarm. It looks like it's headed towards Norris, and the uplift... First arrivals shifted from YMC to YHH and YNR. They were small quakes, less than M2, but still. If it is magma, which they have already said they don't think it is, then we could be in for a wild ride here. I dunno. Could be just redistribution of stress to the east of the swarm, settling in to accommodate the upheaval in the west. Not sure.... We shall see. It might just altogether quit if it's tectonic, with the settlement in the east as the final death throws of the swarm.

a reply to: TrueAmerican
Am I correct in assuming that they're not going to update the USGS site today unless they're in the 2.5+ range?
I can see what you're talking about with the arrivals in the plots, but not being able to access historical plot data anymore makes it tough for the casual observer to spot trends and migration.

I know one thing...
Walking around the Norris Basin sends my Spidey-Senses through the roof.
That little voice screams "This is probably not the safest place on the planet to be standing at the moment.
Can we go now?"

Thanks for all you do to keep us informed.

a reply to: sageturkey

You're welcome.

Ok, so some seismicity resumed at the main swarm location after the flurry closer to Norris. So it appears that in the midst of the main swarm, which still continues lightly, the other small swarm area closer to Norris just had a flurry of small seismicty. So it looks as though that Norris swarm may not be entirely dead yet. I've seen nothing there since, but this is YS, so anything can happen. Sure is interesting though.

Norris Deformation data for reader reference.
Inhale...


Source

a reply to: sageturkey

And just now another bit of seismicity in that just-west-of-Norris location. It's when multiple swarms are going off at once that I get nervous. Why? Because that's one of the characteristics the scientists expect before it blows. Uplift is another. We have uplift, although slight. What's missing is increased gas emissions, and increased heat from the hydrothermal system. If there's a hydrothermal explosion right about now, I think Ima have a heart attack.

a reply to: TrueAmerican

No kidding! I'll be puttin' a few things in the truck if this keeps up...
Temperatures do look like they're up a bit for the most part from the charts I'm looking at, but they're days old...

a reply to: sageturkey

Well if you look at 30 day averages around the thermal sensors, they don't seem to be going up much overall, so that part is good. Be sure to look at 30 day averages. But still, I hear you on that those are days old. Things can change so fast there, they could be going out the roof right now and we wouldn't know it.