Yellowstone looks to be keeping everyone on their toes as we ring in 2009. The earthquake swarm reported earlier this week is continuing, with multiple events between 2-3.5 on the Richter Scale. Again, the folks monitoring the caldera – this time the Univ. of Utah – play down these events as normal for any active caldera system … and they’re very likely right. However, the media love to bring up the “supervolcano” angle and we’re even getting expert opinion from (wait for it) Garrison Keillor!. The earthquakes are just normal earthquakes so far – none of the dreaded/anticipated harmonic tremor that might indicate an eruption. This will likely mean that more gas and water monitoring will be occurring in the park in the coming weeks/months.
25 responses to “Yellowstone New Year’s Eve Update”
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I’ve already recieved 6 earthquake alerts today on my cell phone for the Yellowstone area. You can go to the USGS site and sign up for the alerts. The quakes at Yellowstone Lake so for today register between a 2.2 and a 3.4 which came in a couple hours ago.
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even if nothing particularly dramatic results from all this activity, it might be worthwhile to resurvey the inflated plains of the the NE lake bottom this spring and see if there are any changes. This is a great example of science in action and a timely reminder that sometimes geologic events occur on the human time scale. And also a nice distraction during the Rose Bowl commercial breaks (though as a Husky, I’m a bit conflicted on who to root for)
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make that 2 big red lines
http://www.seis.utah.edu/helicorder/heli/yellowstone/Uuss.LKWY_SHZ_US.2008123100.gif -
The action on the seismographs looks like nothing more than noise. It likely has something to do with the wind being calm early in the day and gusting over 30 mph now.
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Quote of the week
“It’s not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.”
~ Werner Herzog
Eruptions 
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