Explosive situation in Yellowstone

Cool. I was thinking about moving to Alberta, hell, I'll just be closer so when everything exploded I'll die quicker, less hassle this way

I would actaully be very curious to see what would happen if YellowStone really did explode... Hopefully I'm not vacationing there when/if it blows...

Another Yellowstone article this morning.

www.denverpost.com...

Highlights:

Bobbing atop Yellowstone Lake, scientists saw worrisome signs that the vents were active: The water churned with bubbles. A wide swath of water was turned opaque by finely dissolved sediments. The overpowering stench of hydrogen sulfide filled the air. And water temperatures 65 feet below the surface shot as high as 187 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dropping a submersible rover for a closer look confirmed that up to a gallon per second of shimmering water shot from hydrothermal vents as large as coffee cans.




[Edited on 18-8-2003 by kukla]

Both the timing and the size of the Yellowstone volcano are startling. As regards time, it has been found that eruption may occur every 600,000 years with the last eruption just over 600,000 years ago. Currently there is movement at the ground surface. So, we may wonder for how much longer the volcano is going to remain dormant, or quiet! As regards size, the Yellowstone situation is said to be on such a scale, that, if in fact the volcano did erupt, the total effect could be world threatening. Some scientists consider that much of central North America could be covered by debris. They consider also that the rest of the world could suffer the darkness of a nuclear winter from the dust. The number of people surviving in the whole world may be only a few thousand.

Is the fact that the caldera is so large,if it blows it may be more diffuse and not so destructive,like water passing through a large pipe instead of a garden hose.

This is the best site to explain whats going on I have read to date...

www.earthmountainview.com...

Little West Thumb has started to twitch...

www.seis.utah.edu...

The current geologic activity in Yellowstone appears to be much closer to the surface than would be exhibited by magma flows. At such shallow depths, water heated by the earth is driving the changes.



"We're not searching for magmatic fluids," said Bob Smith, a geologist at the University of Utah who has studied the park for three decades. "We think this is a very shallow system."



www.bozemandailychronicle.com...

I thought I'd post the Yellowstone press release on the
4.4 quake today.

The epicenter of the shock was located near Huckleberry Mountain in northwest Wyoming, 9 miles southeast of the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park and 9 miles
northeast of Jackson Lake. The earthquake was
reported felt in Yellowstone National Park at the South
Entrance, at Grant Village and in northern Jackson
Hole.

The earthquake may be related to a tectonic fault zone
that extends south from the Red Mountains in
Yellowstone south into the Teton Wilderness.

It is unlikely that there is a connection or triggering
mechanism of the earthquake with the increased
hydrothermal activity at Norris Geyser Basin, which is
about 35 miles from the epicenter, or with
hydrothermal features in Yellowstone Lake that have
received recent publicity.

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

Sounds to me like they are wanting to play down fears of a catastrophic eruption... These systems ARE connected in one way or another...

I would be relocating if I lived there...

Anyone here ever seen that movie "Volcano"?

Yea. I'd say they've come to that conclusion very quickly. Check out the GPS velocities for the day, there was some major shifting.

I live next to yellowstone well close enough to feel the effects of what would happen if it exploded its part of the reason I moved here I might as well be on the front lines when everthing goes down the drain. Do I or dont I say what I know about yellowstone might as well what difference does it make now its been almost a year. When I was living in missoula montana which is not that far away from where I live now I met a man that would later be head of the department of fish wildlife and parks. Do to the fact I was told not to say anything about this I wont mention his name but needless to say about a year ago somewhere that to this date I have not been told about regarding the exact location in yellowstone park I just know that is was somewhere in west yellowstone. A water spout came up out of the ground about 3 times the size of old faithfull.

The Park Ranger was on patroll in his jeep and thought that he was in the middle of a minor earthquake it turned out that a new old faithfull decided to erupt right next to his vehicle. After it was done erupting water that the park ranger discribed as being about 500 feet high and the opening in the ground was measured at about 5 to 7 feet wide. The area was sealed off this took place sometime last april to this day I have not heard one artical about it or anyone talking about it that works in that area. No one will relese pictures of the opening and no one is talking about it. Not only that I live next to the largest man made toxic body of water in the world its called the burkly pit. It made the news several times years ago due to the fact that it killed 257 canadian snow birds that landed in it several years ago I look at this way. Not only yellowstone but the pit and there is a faultline that run's right behind the pit as well as a 250 million or estimated there of dormate volcano that is next to this city as well. This is why I say I might as well be on the front lines when it all comes down. Lets see here If there is a earthquake that triggers the eruption of yellowstone there is a good chance I wont be around being as close to it as I am doesnt really matter. The earthquake might break open the pit causing most of the people in this city to die that way or there is a small possiblity that the nearby volcano that has been dormate for 250 million years or estimated there of could blow. And besides that I have a bonus. This city before it was built the way it was today used to be a mineing town. The city has lots of underground passage ways that have been flooded due to the accident that caused the pit to be closed down to begin with. If I dont sink I might die by the way of suffication due to a near by eurption or be crushed by the way of a earthquake causing this city to colapse in on itself. And if I dont get any of that there is always toxin's from the near by water in the pit getting ready to over flow it is now only about 75 feet from the top. But here's the bonus if I am lucky enough to survive I get the chance to possibly see the end of the so called civilized world as we know it and if I am lucky new property to build on. And not alot of feds wanting to come to the now distroyed state of montana lol.

Maybe we should have a ats meeting in this state after all if we could find out exactly when this is going to happen what better then front line seats to a once in a life time oppertunity.

But yellowstone has been acting up lately maybe I will get to see this sooner that I thought but I will make the long time users of ats a deal should I still have internet access at the time this happens and have some means of posting a video link to the footage that takes place I will be sure to post that on here for the long time users of ats.

falcon

Also If I can get any pictures of this new old faithfull if you want to call it that. I will post it on here but dont hold your breath I have been waiting for almost a year.

Can you sneak out there and get a pic of the new geiser?!?

ewww...that would be awesome.

Tonight on the Discovery Channel:
"Supervolcanoes"

One of the world's largest supervolcanoes, much more powerful than Mt. St. Helens, lies under Yellowstone National Park. The last eruption in Sumatra 70,000 years ago pushed mankind to the edge of extinction; scientists think the next is overdue.

8 & 11pm EST

dsc.discovery.com...

-B.

Originally posted by Loki
Anyone here ever seen that movie "Volcano"?

Yes, I have it on tape. (What can I say? We geologists dont get much exposure in Hollywood!)

The volcano described in the movie is much different from that in Yellowstone. Yellowstone is likely pyroclastic in nature, meaning that it contains much more silicic (silicon rich) magma. The volcano described in the movie basically appeared to be a hot spot volcano, similar to the one that formed the Hawaiian islands.

A Hot Spot is a magmatic penetration through the crust which is stationary. (If you look at a map of the Hawaiian islands, you can see what I mean... the hot spot stays in one spot, and the oceanic plate moves over it. The hot spot burns through the plate, forms a large volcanic island, and then the plate moves off of the hot spot, and it burns through again in a new spot, forming a new island). Hot Spot volcanos tend to contain ultra mafic (very iron rich) magma, which is very watery, and therefore during eruptions, the magma basically boils over and pours out, running all over the place (IE, no large explosions). Indeed, in many such eruptions, lava flows present the only hazard, and as long as you can stay out of the way, you are not in danger.

Yellowstone, due to its much more silicon rich magma will be much thicker and viscous, and therefore will "clog" and allow much higher levels of pressure to build up. These kinds of volcanos tend to have far more explosive and destructive eruptions.

Hope that explains a little!

The following are excerpts from a BBC program from 1999 regarding Supervolcanos and SuperCalderas, and the exact potential of destruction resulting from an eruption.

BILL BONNICHSEN: Volcanoes will spew ash for a few tens or maybe a few hundreds of miles. This ash, and it's like two metres thick, in Nebraska is 1600 kilometres or more away from its potential source, so that's an amazing thing. There really had been no previous documentation, to my knowledge, of phenomenon like that.

ROBERT SMITH: Supervolcanoes are eruptions and explosions of catastrophic proportions.

BILL McGUIRE: When you actually sit down and think about these things they are absolutely apocalyptic in scale.

PROF MICHAEL RAMPINO (New York University): It's difficult to conceive of a, of an eruption this big.

NARRATOR: Scientists have never witnessed a supervolcanic eruption, but they can calculate how vast they are.

BILL McGUIRE: Super eruptions are often called VEI8 and this means that they sit at point 8 on what's known as a volcano explosivity index. Now this runs from zero up to 8. It's actually a measure of the violence of a volcanic eruption and each point on it represents an eruption 10 times more powerful than the previous one, so if we take Mount St. Helens, for example, which is a VEI5, we can represent that eruption by a cube of this sort of size, this represents here the amount of material ejected during that eruption. If you go up step higher and look at a VI6, something of the Santorini size for example, then we can represent the amount of material ejected in Santorini by a cube of this sort of size, but if we go up to VEI8 eruptions then we're dealing with something on an altogether different scale, a colossal eruption and you can represent a VI8, some of the biggest VI8 eruptions by a cube of this, this sort of size. It's absolutely enormous.

NARRATOR: The exact geological conditions needed to create a vast magma chamber exist in very few places, so there are only a handful of supervolcanoes in the world. The last one to erupt was Toba 74,000 years ago. No modern human has ever witnessed an eruption. We're not even sure where all the supervolcanoes are. Yellowstone National Park, North America. Ever since people began to explore Yellowstone the area was known to be hydrothermal. It was assumed these hot springs and geysers were perfectly harmless, but all that was to change.

ROBERT SMITH: The magma chamber we found extends basically beneath the entire caldera. It's maybe 40-50 kilometres long, maybe 20 kilometres wide and it has a thickness of about 10 kilometres. So it's a giant in volume and essentially encompasses a half or a third of the area beneath Yellowstone National Park. NARRATOR: The magma chamber was enormous. If it erupted it would be devastating. To discover the extent of the devastation scientists had to understand the force of the eruption. The clues to this could be found in a much smaller volcano halfway across the world: the Greek island of Santorini. The eruption here 3,500 years ago, although not VEI8 in scale, did have a small magma chamber. Professor Steve Sparks has spent much of his career studying Santorini.

NARRATOR: A terrible truth underlies all mankind's efforts to understand the vast mechanisms which drive VEI8 eruptions. Ultimately trying to find out what makes supervolcanoes work may be pointless. Consider the last one. 74,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted here in Sumatra. It would have been the loudest noise ever heard by man. It would have blasted vast clouds of ash across the world.

NARRATOR: For a long time scientists have known that volcanic ash can affect the global climate. The fine ash and sulphur dioxide blasted into the stratosphere reflects solar radiation back into space and stops sunlight reaching the planet. This has a cooling effect on the Earth. In the year following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo for instance the average global temperature fell by half a degree Celsius. By comparing the amount of ash ejected by past volcanoes with their effect on the Earth's temperature, Rampino has estimated the impact of the Toba eruption on the global climate 74,000 years ago.

LYNN JORDE: Every event that takes place in our past, every major event, a population increase, a population decrease, or the exchange of people from one population to another changes the composition of the mitochondrial DNA in that population, so what happens is that we have a record of our past written in our mitochondrial genes.

LYNN JORDE: We expected that we would see a pattern consistent with a relatively constant population size. Instead, we saw something that departed dramatically from that expectation. We saw a pattern much more consistent with a dramatic reduction in population size at some point in our past.

NARRATOR: This confirmed what other geneticists have noticed. Given the length of time humans have existed, there should be a wide range of genetic variation, yet DNA from people throughout the world is surprisingly similar. What could have caused this? The answer is a dramatic reduction of the population some time in the past: a bottleneck.

LYNN JORDE: We imagine the population diagrammed like this. In the distant past back here we have a large population, then a bottleneck looking like this and then a subsequent enlargement of population size again, so we would have families of people in the distant past with a significant amount of genetic diversity, but when the bottleneck occurs, when there's a reduction in population size perhaps only a few of those families would survive the bottleneck.

We have a dramatic reduction in genetic diversity during this time when the population is very small and then after the bottleneck the people who would we, who we would see today would be descendants only of those who survived, so they're going to be genetically much more similar to one another reducing the amount of genetic variation.

www.bbc.co.uk...

Heads up on the tube this week. Discovery is replaying the Yellowstone/Supervolcano special. I watched it last night and it reads a lot like the script DR found for the BBC special.

disaster type shows on TV lately. Last night the super wave documentary was on again. Waves over 1,000 feet high.

Are they preparing us all subliminaly for the coming events?

The bible code shows words like split...volcano...cataclism...in reference to the USA.

You get the picture?

Eruption warning for Karthala Volcano in Comoros...

www.volcanolive.com...