Whats going on at yellowstone?, page 467

reply to post by Moshpet

Mosh,

There are millions of people who frequent and visit the park at any time. Quakes that are felt are registered almost immediately. There is no cover up going on, unless you consider millions of domestic and foreign guests all part of the cover up.

Micro quakes must be evaluated. All the geyser activity, hot springs, animals, etc are not just in particular places in the park. Hot springs, Geysers, Mud Pots, Fumeroles are everywhere and not just at Old Faithful. As such there are thousands of hydrothermal events that can cause ground movement at any time. Any area of the park can spring up a new hot spring, geyser, mudpot or fumerole, in days, weeks, years, or decades.

Familiarity with the area must be known. For example, the Carnegie drill hole area in Norris pulses up and down 2-3 inches constantly and registers as a continuing earthquake. Unless you know that, it would be impossible to tell what is going on and most armchair geologists would scream to high heaven saying Norris is about to explode.

Animal life is the same. Herds of buffalo weighing in excess of 1 ton literally shake the ground as they move on the road next to you. You can even hear them moving from a mile away if you put your ear to the ground and if they stampede, you can feel it.

With that said, I honestly wouldn't take any credence into microquakes there about activity. Simply put the vast majority of that >2.5 movement can be attributed to non geologic forces and would not show up on the website and those that do need to be evaluated on signal strength and local terrain. Is that questionable 2.5 quake really a quake, or is it a herd of buffalo 1000 strong that is known to frequent the area?

The real danger is Hydrothermal explosions such as those that formed West Thumb, Mary Bay, Heart Lake, and other large depressions in the park. Thousands of them dot the landscape, some small, others with power equivalent to atomic bombs dropped on Japan when they exploded. Even those events would not be a significant signal of eruptive potential. Superheated water trapped with no escape becomes a pressure cooker on a lengthy time scale. When finally released, it can be very explosive.

Yellowstone is a dynamic and ever changing system, never the same from one day to the next. It is one of the few areas of the world in which you can sit on top of a living breathing volcano and see those changes first hand.

There really is no conspiracy.