An hour's drive southwest of Yellowstone is a place
geologists call the Heise Volcanic Field. Heise is the most
recently deceased ancestor in a 400-mile-long line of seven
supervolcanoes, stretching from Yellowstone southwest to the
Nevada-Idaho state line, near McDermitt, Nevada.
"These are all previous Yellowstones," said Lisa
Morgan, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey
in Denver. "There's really a lot of interesting
information we can get out of them."
Like, for instance, how often they erupt, how long they
live and what are the signs they are about to erupt again.
Morgan and her colleague William McIntosh of the New Mexico
Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources have some answers in a
paper about the Heise Volcanic Field that they've published in
the March-April edition of the GSA Bulletin.
First there is timing. According to the geologic evidence,
Yellowstone's volatile old auntie Heise had four separate
cataclysmic caldera-making eruptions in about 2.25 million
years — from 6.65 million to 4.45 million years ago, Morgan
said.
"Then there was a big hiatus before the first big
Yellowstone eruption," Morgan said.
That hiatus lasted more than two million years, she points
out, enough time for the North America tectonic plate to keep
on steadily moving southwest, exposing fresh parts of the
plate to the mysterious stationary hot spot that is burning up
from below and powering the eruptions.
The first catastrophic Yellowstone eruption was about 2.1
million years ago, followed by another at 1.3 million years,
and then the last big one at 640,000 years ago, Morgan said.
Clusters of mega-eruptions like those at Yellowstone and
Heise, with long breaks in between, appear to be the pattern
all the way back to more than 16 million years ago, when the
original “Yellowstone†was created at McDermitt,
Nev., Morgan said.
The life history of these burnt-out Yellowstones might be
something like this: as the North American plate's movement
pushes fresh, unmelted crust over the hotspot, the intense
heat first liquefies the crust's most easily melted rocks —
those granitic rocks made of quartz and feldspars minerals.
These are also relatively lightweight minerals, so they
float upward, triggering powerful earthquakes along the way
and causing dramatic swelling of the landscape as the molten
rock gathers in a magma chambers near the surface.
Eventually, the magma bubble bursts onto the surface as one
of those mega eruptions, Morgan explained.
Eventually, however, the supply of granitic minerals in the
heated portion of crust is used up and the catastrophic
eruptions end, she said.
Finally, as the North American Plate continues its
inch-per-year creep to the southwest, the once-active caldera
is moved off the hotspot.
"Yellowstone is probably in a late phase," said
Yellowstone researcher Kenneth Pierce of the U.S. Geological
Survey in Bozeman, Mont., regarding where Yellowstone might be
in this supervolcano lifecycle.
If so, and if the hotspot activity follows the same pattern
it has for 16 million years, there could be a long hiatus as
the hotspot works on heating up a "new" Yellowstone
up near Red Lodge, Mont., southwest of Billings, he said.
"Before long Billings could get a lot more
exciting," Pierce joked.
.
12-26-04 - Minor quake hits east of Yosemite National
Park
San Jose Mercury News , CA - 2 hours ago
... A minor earthquake rattled a ... The magnitude-3.9 quake hit
at 7:56 pm and was centered about 25 miles east of the small park
border
town of Lee Vining,
|
|
Yellowstone Lake shoreline shifting in
unusual way
December 3, 2004
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP)
-- The shoreline of Yellowstone Lake has been shifting over the
past 50 years, receding and advancing in ways that officials say
are unusual and not clearly understood.
"We're seeing substantial change along the shoreline and it's
not uniform around the basin," said Barbara Pickup, a
graduate student at the University of Arkansas, who has tracked
the shoreline's movement from photos and other data from the past
50 years.
Normally a lake shoreline would advance or recede much like water
in a bathtub -- evenly around the whole tub. A study by
researchers at the University of Arkansas found some portions
eroding, some portions advancing and then a reversal.
"All we know is that there are some intriguing things going
on," said Stephen Boss, a geosciences professor at the
university.
Changes in the shoreline could offer
insight into geological activity at Yellowstone, particularly in
the caldera, the bowl-shaped collapsed volcano in which the lake
sits. Over time, researchers may be able to predict future erosion
on the shore, which would help in planning road maintenance or
archaeological digs on the beaches.
Boss, trained as a coastal geologist, first started wondering
about the Yellowstone Lake shoreline during a family vacation to
the park in 2003.
"We came around this corner and noticed this beautiful
developed sand bar on the north end of West Thumb," Boss
said. He spotted another at Mary Bay.
Sandbars tend to be more common in coastal areas, not high
altitude lakes that have formed in a collapsed volcano, he said.
Boss returned to Arkansas to search for any scientific literature
about the lake shore, but found very little.
When Pickup arrived at the university that fall, Boss told her
about the shoreline and all of the influences that could be at
work, including shifting sediments, the slow inhaling and exhaling
of the caldera and other unseen forces.
"It looked like a pretty rich thing to go and
investigate," Boss said.
To look at the erosion process over time, Boss and Pickup ordered
aerial photographs of Yellowstone Lake from the U.S. Geological
Survey dating back to 1954.
Pickup then had the photos converted to digital images that could
be measured and compared.
Overall, Pickup and Boss found the West Thumb shore has receded,
but they also found episodes when the lake shore advanced in
certain spots.
"I was surprised to see how much change there was," Boss
said.
It's possible that the movement of the shoreline reflects changes
in the caldera, portions of which rose three feet between 1923 and
1984 and dropped about eight inches between 1985 and 1995. Other
research has shown that the floor of the caldera rose again in
1995 and 1996 and fell again in 1997.
Now that scientists have a better idea about how the shoreline has
changed, they'll try to isolate which factors exert the most
influence.
Next summer, researchers will focus on the south shore of West
Thumb and, later, use three-dimensional images that will closely
track the shoreline's movement over the coming years.
"If a pebble falls off, we should theoretically be able to
detect it," Boss said.
Pickup presented her most recent findings in Denver last month at
the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
|
Scientists Probing Yellowstone's Murk
Mystery
Middle Creek Is Turning Color Of Glacier
Water
POSTED:
12:50 pm MDT October 5, 2004
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. -- Testing
with dye is planned to find out why a creek near the East
Entrance has turned greenish.
Middle Creek, which flows into the North Fork of the
Shoshone River, has been the color of glacier water since
August.
"There's a small, unnamed pond near Sylvan Pass
that serves as the headwaters ... and sometime recently it
turned sort of a greenish-gray tint," Yellowstone
spokesman Al Nash said.
"It looks just like a pond at the foot of a
glacier."
Glaciers, such as those in Montana's Glacier National
Park, tint ponds and streams by filling them with the fine
dust they grind off rocks.
The Sylvan Pass pond is not near a glacier. But Nash
said glacial ice or ice remnants might have resurfaced after
being buried.
Also, rock-crushing has been taking place in the area
for road work and a large mudslide occurred on the pass in
July.
Nash emphasized that no cause has been singled out.
The dye test, he said, will likely have to wait until
more favorable weather next spring. It would enable scientists
to get a better idea of how water that might be causing the
strange color flows underground.
The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, Federal
Highway Administration, National Park Service and U.S.
Geological Survey have been trying to solve the mystery.
Park Geologist Hank Heasler expects to have a report
ready by December but doubts all the questions will be solved
by then.
"We've aggressively jumped on top of it because
we're here," he said. "Now we're starting to bring
in outside experts like the United States Geology Survey to
help with a timely understanding of the conditions."
|
| Posted on Sun, Oct. 03, 2004 |
Yellowstone area open
Associated Press
A portion of the Norris Geyser Basin at Yellowstone National
Park in Wyoming closed for more than a year because of safety
concerns has reopened to visitors.
A new boardwalk was built through the Back Basin area. It
replaces an older trail section that was closed July 22, 2003,
because of high ground temperatures and increased thermal
activity.
While most of the area reopened to visitors last Oct. 9,
part of the loop trail remained closed until boardwalk was built
along a new route through the thermal area.
The new boardwalk allows visitors to see Porkchop Geyser and
Green Dragon Spring. The new route also provides access to new
thermal features that have developed within the past year and
affords visitors new vistas of the Norris Geyser Basin area.
Norris Geyser Basin is the hottest and most seismically
active geyser basin in Yellowstone.
The thermal activity at Norris does not pose a threat to
visitors and employees as long as people stay on open trails and
boardwalks, park officials said.
|
|
Minor earthquake rattles Douglas
8-29-04
Associated Press
DOUGLAS, Wyo. - A minor earthquake rattled east-central Wyoming on
Sunday afternoon but apparently caused no damage.
The quake brought some Douglas residents out of their homes to
compare notes with their neighbors.
The temblor struck at 12:49 p.m. and measured 3.8 magnitude, the
National Earthquake Information Center in Denver said.
The center classified the quake as minor and fairly shallow. The
epicenter was 10 miles north-northwest of Douglas.
In 1984, a quake measuring 5.5 magnitude shook the area, causing
slight damage.
While most of Wyoming's earthquake activity occurs in the state's
northwestern corner and far west boundary, the Wyoming State Geological
Survey has noted a history of earthquakes in central Wyoming, particularly
southwest of Douglas near Laramie Peak.
Copyright © 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved
|
Yellowstone Mudslides and Floods Trap 16, Close Entrance
Yellowstone National Park
Associated Press
Sixteen people had to be rescued Sunday after mudslides bogged down
three vehicles and stranded a fourth near the east entrance of Yellowstone
National Park.
The east entrance is closed and it doesn't look like it will be reopened
any time soon. The two largest slides were ten feet deep and 90 yards
long.
Yellowstone spokesman Al Nash says thousands of cubic feet of debris will
have to be removed. Besides that, the slides undercut part of the roadway
and washed away guardrails.
The mud began flowing around eight last night, sloshing up to the hoods of
some cars. Some people had to be helped out through the windows of their
car windows.
No one was hurt, and the 16 travelers were evacuated to Pahaska Tepee, a
resort just outside the east entrance. Others who had been planning to
leave the park through the east entrance stayed the night at park
facilities at Fishing Bridge.
No one has been reported missing, but Park County sheriff's officials plan
to search the area with metal detectors and a dog as a precaution.
Two wildfires burned over 23-thousand acres in the area last summer,
closing the east entrance for about two weeks. The mudslides occurred just
outside the burn area.
|
By Kevin Krajick
July 2004
Smithsonian Magazine
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/jul04/phenomena.html
Yellowstone Grumbles
Pent-up water and steam threaten to burst through the park's surface (And
we're not talking Old Faithful here)
Yellowstone National Park is a land of many perils. Occasionally, one of
the three million yearly visitors strolls up to a 2,000-pound bison and is
gored. Others eat poisonous plants, snowmobile on avalanche-prone
slopes, or plunge off a cliff on that last step backward to frame the
perfect photograph. And at Yellowstone's 10,000 volcanically driven hot
springs, geysers, bubbling mud pots and fumaroles—earth's largest
concentration of hydrothermal features—about two dozen people have been
boiled alive after falling or jumping in.
"People do a lot of crazy things," says Lisa Morgan, a
volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who conducts research
in the park for a few weeks every summer. She is trying to protect the
sandal-clad
innocents not from these mishaps, however, but from the ultimate
"thermal accident": hydrothermal explosions. They can happen
when magma-heated water and steam build up in underground pockets. This
pressure causes
parts of the landscape to rise and fall like merry-go-round horses.
Usually they settle back down again harmlessly. But now and then, things
blow up.
One of Morgan's best guesses for the next big blowout—maybe the biggest
in 3,000 years—is a 2,100-foot-wide, 100-foot-high swelling on the bed
of Yellowstone Lake. No one has observed any of the park's ground
movements long enough to say which ones signal danger, but she says the
lake bed could conceivably burst open. If so, lakeside picnickers could
see a tsunami or truck-size rocks heading their way. "I wouldn't want
to be here," says Morgan. Then she thinks of the spectacle.
"Well, maybe in an airplane."
The park sits on a still-active 30- by 45-mile caldera, a depression
created when a volcano erupted 640,000 years ago. Chances of a lava
eruption in the next 10,000 years appear remote, but magma simmering four
to
five miles beneath the caldera's trapped groundwater drives the park's
ydrothermal convulsions. Geysers like Old Faithful release pressure, but
it can build to the breaking point when heated fluids get sealed in by
shifts in rock structures, clogged vents or overlying sediment and mineral
deposits.
In and around Yellowstone Lake—which lies near the caldera's
center—Morgan and colleagues have identified several areas heavily
pocked by past hydrothermal explosions. The pits, which appear to
untrained eyes as
ponds or depressions in the ground, are a few yards to hundreds of yards
wide. Along the lake, in eroded beach cliffs and creek banks, Morgan has
found layers of sand and sharp-angled rock up to three feet thick;
the debris was hurled as far as three and a half miles by past explosions
in the lake bed. Arrowheads jumbled in lakeshore deposits suggest unlucky
prehistoric Native Americans were around for some of the explosions.
Major ones occurred from 3,000 to 14,000 years ago, according to
radiocarbon dating of wood fragments mingled with the deposited rock and
soil debris. Since people started keeping track, in 1872, there have been
at
least 20 minor blowouts at sites around the park, including several at
favorite tourist spots such as Biscuit Basin and Norris Geyser Basin. The
last notable one was in 1989, when the throat of Norris Basin's Pork Chop
Geyser apparently clogged with minerals. When it burst, boulders rained
down near tourists more than 200 feet away. (They were unscathed.)
Only recently did scientists realize the entire park was heaving up and
down. In the 1970s, geophysics professor Robert Smith of the University of
Utah compared new scientific surveys of ground elevations with
surveys made for road building in the 1920s. He found the caldera's center
had risen nearly three feet. It kept rising until 1985, when a series of
earthquakes rocked the park. Scientists speculate that the tremors
coincided with the sideways escape of pent-up gases. Afterward, the
caldera began deflating by three-quarters of an inch a year. In 1995, some
parts of it reversed direction and started reinflating, until stopping in
2002. In the meantime, a previously undetected 25-mile-wide swelling began
outside the caldera, near Norris Basin, surrounded by smaller swellings
one to three miles in diameter.
Though no one is sure what all of this heaving means, it's given
researchers a sense of urgency about understanding the park's contortions.
"Protecting visitors is our No. 1 concern," says park geologist
Hank
Heasler, who is working with other scientists to come up with a
threat-assessment plan.
New problem spots are popping up all the time as well. In March 2003,
fourteen new steam vents opened along a 230-foot line north of Norris
Basin, releasing plumes of dense water vapor and powdered glass shards in
a tremendous roar. Then, last July, geysers began erupting at odd times.
The park had to close off much of Norris when ground temperatures shot up
in places from 80 degrees Fahrenheit to 200, and the earth near a
boardwalk became more acidic and began to dissolve. The basin has since
calmed down, and rangers have reopened most of it, but scientists are
monitoring trailside areas with thermometers stuck in the ground,
seismographs peppering strategic hills, and radar images taken from
satellites. "Yellowstone is like a medical patient, but we haven't
studied it long enough to know its normal pulse or respiration rate,"
says Heasler, standing half a mile from the new steam vents.
Morgan is still tracking the dome on the Yellowstone Lake floor called the
"inflated plain." She first spotted it in 1999, while she and
colleagues were mapping the lake bottom. The rise, she says, is apparently
the result of steam or carbon dioxide building up under the lake bed,
sealed in by sediments and overlying water pressure. The swelling seems to
have grown in the 1990s and is suspiciously close in size to major blowout
craters nearby. In fact, it lies along a nearby fissure, a crack that
forms the bed of curiously straight Weasel Creek and continues through the
lake bed itself. Morgan says the fissure may have been formed by the
caldera's rise and fall, like the crack atop a loaf of bread rising in the
oven.
At the lakeshore opposite the inflated plain one summer day, Morgan and
USGS geochemist Pat Shanks investigate some small, inactive craters. They
insert a temperature probe into the soil; six inches down, it registers
152 degrees F. Something is still fuming there. Suddenly, some tourists
armed with cameras and collapsible walking sticks crest a ridge and charge
down, and their guide collars Morgan for an impromptu lecture on the
craters. She cheerfully obliges, telling the visitors that the craters are
old features—probably not dangerous right now. She barely mentions the
inflated plain. "I don't want to scare them too much," she says.
"These people are on vacation."
By Kevin Krajick
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues04/jul04/phenomena.html
| Montana |
|
|
| Rumbles
of danger in Yellowstone Park
By
Smithsonian Magazine - For AP Weekly Features - 07/20/04
Yellowstone
National Park is a land of many perils.
Occasionally,
one of the three million yearly visitors strolls up to a
2,000-pound bison and is gored. Others eat poisonous plants,
snowmobile on avalanche-prone slopes, or plunge off a cliff on
that last step backward to frame the perfect photograph. And at
Yellowstone's 10,000 volcanically driven hot springs, geysers,
bubbling mud pots and fumaroles - Earth's largest concentration of
hydrothermal features - about two dozen people have been boiled
alive after falling or jumping in.
''People do a lot of crazy things,'' says Lisa Morgan, a
volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who conducts
research in the park for a few weeks every summer.
She is trying to protect the sandal-clad innocents not from these
mishaps, however, but from the ultimate ''thermal accident'':
hydrothermal explosions. They can happen when magma-heated water
and steam build up in underground pockets. This pressure causes
parts of the landscape to rise and fall like merry-go-round
horses. Usually they settle back down again harmlessly. But now
and then, things blow up.
Morgan tells Smithsonian magazine's Kevin Krajick in the July
issue that one of her best guesses for the next big blowout -
maybe the biggest in 3,000 years - is a 2,100-foot-wide,
100-foot-high swelling on the bed of Yellowstone Lake.
No
one has observed any of the park's ground movements long enough to
say which ones signal danger, but she says the lake bed could
conceivably burst open. If so, lakeside picnickers could see a
tsunami or truck-size rocks heading their way. ''I wouldn't want
to be here,'' says Morgan. Then she thinks of the spectacle.
''Well, maybe in an airplane.''
The park sits on a still-active 30-by-45-mile caldera, a
depression created when a volcano erupted 640,000 years ago.
Chances of a lava eruption in the next 10,000 years appear remote,
but magma simmering four to five miles beneath the caldera's
trapped groundwater drives the park's hydrothermal convulsions.
Geysers like Old Faithful release pressure, but it can build to
the breaking point when heated fluids get sealed in by shifts in
rock structures, clogged vents or overlying sediment and mineral
deposits.
In and around Yellowstone Lake, which lies near the caldera's
center, Morgan and colleagues have identified several areas
heavily pocked by past hydrothermal explosions. Major ones
occurred from 3,000 to 14,000 years ago, according to radiocarbon
dating of wood fragments mingled with the deposited rock and soil
debris.
Since people started keeping track in 1872, there have been at
least 20 minor blowouts at sites around the park, including
several at favorite tourist spots such as Biscuit Basin and Norris
Geyser Basin. The last notable one was in 1989, when the throat of
Norris Basin's Pork Chop Geyser apparently clogged with minerals.
When it burst, boulders rained down near tourists more than 200
feet away. (They were unscathed.)
At the lakeshore opposite the inflated plain one summer day,
Morgan and USGS geochemist Pat Shanks investigated some small,
inactive craters. They inserted a temperature probe into the soil;
6 inches down, it registered 152 degrees. Something is still
fuming there.
Suddenly, some tourists armed with cameras and collapsible walking
sticks crested a ridge and charged down, and their guide collared
Morgan for an impromptu lecture on the craters. She cheerfully
obliged, telling the visitors that the craters are old features -
probably not dangerous right now. She barely mentioned the
inflated plain. ''I don't want to scare them too much,'' she said.
''These people are on vacation.''
|
|
Alaska Quake Changed Yellowstone Geysers
By University of Utah
05/29/04 Less than 18 hours after the Denali
earthquake in Alaska, Smith and colleagues at the University of Utah
Seismograph Stations reported the major jolt had triggered more than 200 small
earthquakes in Yellowstone -- something widely reported by news media in the
days following the quake.
A powerful earthquake that rocked Alaska in 2002 not only triggered small
earthquakes almost 2,000 miles away at Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park -- as
was reported at the time -- but also changed the timing and behavior of some of
Yellowstone's geysers and hot springs, a new study says. "We did not expect
to see these prolonged changes in the hydrothermal system," says University
of Utah seismologist Robert B. Smith, a co-author of the study in the June issue
of the journal Geology.
While other large quakes have been known to alter the activity of nearby
geysers and hot springs, the Denali fault earthquake of Nov. 3, 2002, is the
first known to have changed the behavior of such hydrothermal features at great
distances, according to Smith and his colleagues. They say the magnitude-7.9
quake was one of the strongest of its type in North America in the past 150
years.
Smith conducted the study with Stephan Husen, a University of Utah adjunct
assistant professor of geophysics who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology; Ralph Taylor, an engineer who designs geyser monitoring equipment at
Yellowstone National Park; and Henry Heasler, Yellowstone National Park´s
geologist.
Yellowstone Quakes
Less than 18 hours after the Denali earthquake in Alaska, Smith and
colleagues at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations reported the major
jolt had triggered more than 200 small earthquakes in Yellowstone -- something
widely reported by news media in the days following the quake.
Smith now says the triggered numbered more than 1,000 within a week of the
Denali quake -- if the count includes tiny temblors that were not
"located," meaning their epicenters and depths were not determined. He
says the quakes ranged in magnitude from minus 0.5 to just under 3.0. (Tiny
quakes have negative magnitudes because modern seismic equipment can detect
quakes smaller than was possible when the logarithmic magnitude scales were
devised.) Most of the triggered quakes were centered near geysers and hot
springs.
Strong Earthquakes as Seismic and Geothermal Triggers Scientists once
believed that an earthquake at one location could not trigger earthquakes at
distant sites. That belief was shattered in 1992 when the magnitude-7.3 Landers
earthquake in California´s Mojave Desert triggered a swarm of quakes more than
800 miles away at Yellowstone, as well as other temblors near Mammoth Lakes,
California, and Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The magnitude-7.5 Hebgen Lake, Montana,
quake northwest of Yellowstone -- a 1959 disaster that killed 28 people --
triggered changes in Yellowstone´s geysers and hot springs, something not
unexpected for a strong quake nearby. Smith believes the Denali fault ruptured
in such a direction -- from northwest to southeast -- that the brunt of its
energy and its powerful surface waves were aimed southeast toward Yellowstone.
Geyser Activity
As a result, the stresses rippling through the ground at Yellowstone were 200
to 300 times greater than if the Denali quake´s waves were aimed elsewhere, he
says. As the Denali quake´s surface waves arrived at Yellowstone, changes in
hydrothermal activity first were noted at the 100 Spring Plain hot spring system
in Norris Geyser Basin. "Several small hot springs, not known to have
geysered before, suddenly surged into a heavy boil with eruptions as high as 1
meter [about 39 inches]," Smith and colleagues wrote in Geology. "The
temperature at one of these springs increased rapidly from about 42 to 93to 199
degrees Fahrenheit]" and became much less acidic than normal. "In the
same area, another hot spring that was usually clear showed muddy, turbid
water." Meanwhile, some geysers erupted more frequently than normal, while
others erupted less frequently.
Yellowstone has more than 10,000 geysers, hot springs and fumaroles (steam
vents), and scientists monitored how often 22 of the geysers erupted during the
winter of 2002-2003. Eight of the 22 "displayed notable changes in their
eruption intervals" after the Denali quake, 10 showed no significant
changes and the other four were too erratic in the timing of their eruptions to
determine if the quake changed them, the researchers wrote. Of the eight that
changed: -- Geysers that erupted more frequently following the Denali quake
included Daisy, Depression, Plume and Riverside geysers in Upper Geyser Basin,
and Pink Geyser in Lower Geyser Basin. -- Geysers that erupted less frequently
after the Denali quake included Castle and Plate geysers in Upper Geyser Basin
and Lone Pine Geyser in West Thumb Geyser Basin.
Most geysers returned to their normal timing days to months after the Denali
quake. Oddly, geysers affected by earlier nearby earthquakes -- most notably Old
Faithful and Grand Geyser in Upper Geyser Basin -- were not affected by the
Denali earthquake.
How the Denali Quake Sparked Yellowstone Activity Scientists do not know
if the strong surface waves from the Denali quake independently triggered
Yellowstone´s small quakes and changes in geyser activity. Smith suspects not.
He believes the Denali quake´s waves affected the geysers by changing water
pressure in underground conduits or "pipes" that feed the geysers.
Such changes -- which in some cases would have made hot water "flash"
explosively into steam -- would have altered the pressure on adjacent faults,
triggering small earthquakes nearby.
Ripple Effect
Why did some geysers erupt more often and others less often? The
researchers believe that when the Denali quake waves rippled through
Yellowstone, they jarred loose minerals that had sealed some underground hot
water conduits. In some cases, that allowed superheated, pressurized water to
flow more freely to make geysers erupt more often. In other cases, the rupturing
of subterranean mineral seals enlarged the size of the conduits supplying
geysers, reducing water pressure so those geysers erupted less often.
Smith speculates that yet other geysers remained unchanged because they did
not have pent-up gas and water pressure and were not affected by the Denali
quake´s surface waves. The Denali quake also generated noticeable water waves
in Seattle´s Lake Union, Louisiana´s Lake Pontchartrain and in swimming pools
on the East Coast. It also triggered small quakes in California´s Geysers
geothermal area, which is north of San Francisco, and in eastern California´s
Long Valley, which, like Yellowstone, is a caldera, or giant volcanic crater
created by cataclysmic prehistoric volcanic eruptions.
Hydrothermal Explosions?
The Denali quake also triggered a few small quakes in Utah, and Smith says it
is possible some of those quakes occurred near little-known hot springs along
the Wasatch fault at the base of the Wasatch Range. Smith says the fact that the
Denali quake triggered geyser and hot springs changes at Yellowstone raises an
interesting question: "Could large earthquakes closer to Yellowstone
trigger hydrothermal explosions?" Such steam-and-hot water explosions in
prehistoric times blasted out a hole that now is Mary´s Bay on Yellowstone
Lake.
One such explosion has occurred roughly every 1,000 years since the
glaciers receded from Yellowstone roughly 14,000 years ago. Smith says there is
no evidence prehistoric quakes triggered those blasts. And such explosions were
not triggered by the magnitude-7.5 Hebgen Lake, Mont., quake in 1959 or the
magnituk, Idaho, quake in 1983. Nevertheless, a big quake near Yellowstone with
its surface waves aimed the right way conceivably might "cause large
hydrothermal eruptions," says Smith. "I would hypothesize that is
certainly possible."
© 2004 Newswise i/a/w MarketWatch.com, Inc. All rights
reserved.
ALASKA
EARTHQUAKE DANGERS
... loss. Anchorage High School and Denali Grade School were
damaged severely.
Duration ... M 7.9 Denali fault event of November 3, 2002.
www.greatdreams.com/alaska/alaska-dangers.htm
UPDATE: 14 April 2004
[Editor's Note] - I wish they'd make up their minds if this is dangerous
- or Not!!!
April 28, 2004
Yellowstone Park unlikely to blow up anytime soon: No signs of cataclysmic
eruption
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
Here's a reason to breathe easier: Civilization probably won't be crippled
anytime soon by a pulverizing volcanic eruption at Yellowstone National Park.
New research indicates there is probably not a huge pot of magma brewing
beneath Yellowstone that's building up to a superviolent eruption thousands
of times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
"If something like that was cooking up right now we'd see the evidence,
and we don't," said Drew Coleman, an assistant geology professor at the
University of North Carolina.
Coleman is one of three scientists who authored two recent studies aimed
at changing the way we think about volcanoes - especially how often the "big
ones" erupt.
Earth has seen staggering volcanic eruptions. The last was about 75,000
years ago when an eruption at the Toba volcano in Indonesia may have come
close to wiping out all primates, including humans, university officials
said.
Yellowstone, the largest known center of active volcanism on the planet,
has had its share. Massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 630,000 years
ago were 2,500, 280 and 1,000 times larger, respectively, than Mount St.
Helens.
The latest major eruption formed the famous Yellowstone Caldera than encircles
Old Faithful, Canyon, Grant Village and portions of Yellowstone Lake.
"It's not hyperbole to say that the biggest eruptions could bring an end
to civilization," said Allen F. Glazner, a geology professor at UNC. "Our
new work casts doubt on the assumption that gigantic eruptions should be
relatively common."
To reach that conclusion, Coleman, Glazner and the University of Utah's
John Bartley examined long-extinct volcanoes in California's Sierra Nevada
Mountains.
In particular, they studied bodies of magma that have cooled underground,
called plutons, which are the main building blocks of the Earth's crust.
They also examined seismic waves produced during earthquakes and measured
magma cooling.
According to traditional geologic theories, they should have found big
blobs of magma beneath the surface that formed in less than 1 million years
- a relatively short period of time on a geologic scale. The huge stores
of magma, which is underground molten rock, were thought to be lurking beneath
active volcanoes and feeding large-scale eruptions.
Instead, they found that it takes much longer for those plutons to form,
up to 10 million years, and that it happens in small fits and starts, not
with a big blob of magma rising up.
That means that the giant eruptions fueled by large volumes of magma are
less likely to happen, the researchers concluded.
"We conclude that volcanoes are more prone to chugging along, producing
many small - though still dangerous - eruptions such as the 1980 eruption
at Mount St. Helens, rather than huge civilization-destroying eruptions,"
Coleman said.
Although the research focused on the Sierra Nevada, Coleman said the results
apply to places like Yellowstone.
The findings, which have already drawn praise from some and will likely
spur controversy, appear in the April issue of GSA Today and the May issue
of Geology.
The research comes amid international debate over the existence of mantle
plumes, the columns of hot rocks that were typically thought to rise from
deep within the Earth, giving life to volcanoes in Yellowstone, Hawaii, Iceland
and elsewhere.
Recent research by the U.S. Geological Survey and others suggests there
may not be a deep plume beneath Yellowstone. Instead, a shallow skin of magma
beneath the ground may fuel the area's vast geothermal system.
Events at the park, including the discovery of a bulge at the bottom of
Yellowstone Lake and briefly higher temperatures at Norris Geyser Basin,
have ignited Internet chatter over the possibility of a "supervolcanic" eruption
at Yellowstone.
Like other geologists who have weighed in, UNC's Coleman said that prospect
seems unlikely for a long time to come.
"Of the seismic evidence under Yellowstone that I'm familiar with, there's
no big volume of magma waiting to blow," he said.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
FROM:
http://www.swvrc.org/restless.htm
YELLOWSTONE -
(44o26'00"S
110o40'00"W), 2,805 m, UNITED STATES (Wyoming)
As of the 14th of April, the Yellowstone Volcano
Observatory (YVO), reported that during March 2004, 72 earthquakes were located
in the Yellowstone region. The largest shock to occur during this period
was a magnitude 1.9 earthquake on March 28 at 9:39 PM MST, located about
1.8 miles north northwest of Fishing Bridge, Wyoming. Earthquake activity
in the Yellowstone region is at background levels.
Seismic images of the lake sediments in this area show that they were tilted,
hinting that the region may have been pushed up or "inflated." The amount
of inflation would be much less than the 100-foot height of the feature,
but is currently unknown. The images appear to indicate that the uplift is
associated with accumulation of gas from Yellowstone's hydrothermal (hot
water) system. Similar inferred gas accumulations were also noted elsewhere
within the lake. Future research will assess the amount of uplift and its
origin, whether by gas buildup or other potential mechanisms.
At present, there is no evidence of recent growth of any features beneath
the lake, and there is no indication that residents or visitors are in any
danger. Temperature measurements from hydrothermal vents taken this year
indicate no change in temperatures compared to those taken last year. The
feature may have been there for decades or much longer.
On March 10, 2003, Yellowstone Park biologists discovered 5 dead bison along
the Gibbon River near Norris geyser basin. The bison appear to have died
about one week earlier due to inhalation of toxic geothermal gases. The gases,
most probably CO2 and/or H2S, likely accumulated in
a low area due to very cold windless conditions. Though such events are rare,
over the Park's 132-year history similar animal kills have occurred several
times. Visitors can safely view Yellowstone's thermal areas by staying on
designated trails and boardwalks
The colour code at Yellowstone is currently at
GREEN . ERUPTION
Pro 10.5 is not capable of forecasting
a supervolcano to erupt.
MEDICINE LAKE -
(41o35'00"S
121o44'00"W), 2,412 m, UNITED STATES (California)
As of the 28th of March, the U. S. Geological Survey
(USGS), reported that the swarm of micro-quakes rumbling deep beneath the
bulge by South Sister volcano tapered off but didn't completely stop Thursday,
as scientists began using a second, portable seismometer in hopes of getting
a better feel for just what is going on beneath the Earth's swelling crust.
Only a couple of sizable quakes were reported Thursday, though one just before
noon registered 1.9 on the Richter scale, equal to the largest of more than
100 temblors recorded Tuesday and early Wednesday, according to the Pacific
Northwest Seismograph Network.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists said Wednesday that the swarm of small
quakes that began about 10 a.m. Tuesday had been expected and was an indication
that a modest volume of magma (molten rock) was intruding to an area about
four miles below the surface. The bulge that first was spotted through
satellite-image comparisons in 2001 is believed to have raised the ground
about 10 inches since it began in late 199.7. Willie Scott, scientist in
charge of the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., said
Thursday that they still saw a decline in quakes from the peak registered
late Tuesday, but only time will tell. He also confirmed the propriety of
calling the temblors "micro-earthquakes," which he said is a term used commonly
for these types of events. Right away, it gives the reader the news that
these are tiny. Remember that the Richter scale is logarithmic, not linear.
The official count of locatable earthquakes stood around 80 at mid-afternoon
Thursday, Scott said. No new ones had been reported at the site by midday
Friday, meaning the swarm is likely at an end. "There are many other,
smaller ones that are not locatable", he explained. "As they get
diminishingly small, they get more difficult to recognize, so an absolute
count is not possible. The excruciatingly exact number is not a particularly
useful piece of data." The epicentres of the small, deep quakes appeared
to be spread over a wide area, according to the mapping. But Scott said that,
too, is not unusual, due to uncertainty about the precise locations. "These
swarms typically define a patch of epicenters, as this one has," he said.
Scott said crews planned to go in to repair the gear, apparently damaged
by heavy snowfall, on Sunday or Monday, weather permitting. No other new
equipment is likely to be installed at the site until summer, after the snow
melts, he said, unless the level of activity warrants going in sooner.
The colour code at Medicine Lake is currently at
GREEN .
ERUPTION Pro 10.5
is currently forecasting volcano Medicine
Lake to erupt in 2004 with
>25.68%
probability.
Wednesday, Mar 31, 2004
Yellowstone to Move Artifacts to New Gardiner, Mont., Center
By Mike Stark, Billings Gazette, Mont. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business
News
Mar. 30--GARDINER, Mont. - The 5 million objects in Yellowstone National
Park's archive, library and museum collection will have a new home this
summer.
The trick will be getting them there.
Construction is nearly complete on the 32,000-square-foot Yellowstone
Heritage and Research Center, one of the National Park Service's most ambitious
attempts to store park artifacts and create a modern research facility for
staff and visitors.
The building, located near Yellowstone's north entrance, should be finished
in May so that park workers in June can begin trucking objects -- everything
from old maps and original paintings to bird specimens, rare books and fossils
-- the 5 miles from Mammoth Hot Springs to Gardiner.
"I don't think a collections move of this size has ever happened before,"
said Colleen Curry, Yellowstone's supervisory museum curator.
The $6.1 million building will replace the cramped quarters at Mammoth's
Albright Visitor Center, where artifacts from the nation's first national
park are shoe-horned into every available basement space.
Park officials estimate that when the new building opens this fall it
will provide five times the space for Yellowstone's library and archives,
including 20,000 rare and not-so-rare books, and seven times the space for
the museum.
The new facility will also be open to the public, where research can be
conducted in an airy, roomy environment instead bumping elbows around a single
table in the confined spaces of the Mammoth building.
"Right now, it's tough in the space we're in," said Roger Anderson,
Yellowstone's acting chief of cultural resources.
While the building has been under construction, Yellowstone staffers have
been trying since October to document every item that will be transported
and stored there.
That means conducting a painstaking inventory, including about 90,000
photographs and nearly 300,000 natural and cultural objects.
The park conducts a random inventory of a select number of items each
year, but a complete inventory at one time is new territory.
"It had never really been done," Curry said.
With the inventory nearing completion, park officials are gearing up for
the big move. Four teams of 20 people, including park staff, volunteers and
interns, will work together to package items and transport them to the new
location.
Yellowstone officials will get help from Alice Newton, the National Park
Service's "move guru," who coordinates similar moves throughout the agency.
Some items -- such as the older mounted specimens of bear cubs and birds
that were preserved with arsenic -- will require special handling.
"We'll probably have to wear respirators while we're packing them and
many will be hand-carried in smaller vans or station wagons," Curry said.
Original paintings by Thomas Moran and some rare documents will also get
special treatment on their way to the new building.
"It's pretty daunting when you're talking about 5 million items," Curry
said. Yellowstone National Park has generated a lot of "stuff" since its
inception in 1872.
The vast majority of what's being stored is documents such as studies,
journals, decisions, maps and geyser logs.
Yellowstone, because of its huge collection, is the only national park
affiliated with the National Archives, which comes with its own set of rules
about how items must be cared for. In 1989, the Inspector General cited the
park for failing to adequately take care of its collections. Although park
officials took some remedial action, the fundamental problem was that the
park's main storage facility was in the basement of a nearly 100-year-old
building that's prone to flooding.
The new heritage center was built with National Archives standards in
mind, including rigorous control over temperature and environmental
conditions.
The center will also provide more room to process incoming objects, whether
they are old photo albums, park ranger uniforms, postcards or archaeological
evidence.
"We get about 1,000 new objects every year," Anderson said. "That makes
it a challenge in the existing space."
In the basement, a collections "quarantine" room will give park officials
a chance to look over each item and make sure it's ready to be stored at
the center. A proper venting system will help in decontaminating objects
or accommodating tribal rituals for sacred objects donated to the park.
Nearby, archaeology and geology labs will give park scientists their own
place to work.
"Right now, we have a physical science trailer," Anderson said.
On the main floor, pieces of Yellowstone's collection will be displayed
and the naturally lighted library will include plenty of shelf space and
a climate-controlled room for rare books. The 1,400 researchers that visit
Yellowstone's collections annually will have more work space and more organized
access to park materials.
At Albright, "we can't really offer tours of different storage areas and
can't accommodate researchers in a comfortable way," Curry said. "There's
a lot of excitement about this."
The move is expected to last through the summer. An opening date this
fall has not been set.
When it happens, though, Anderson predicted that Yellowstone's story --
told in the bits and pieces of 5 million objects -- will come together in
a more cohesive way.
"It's going to make a huge difference," he said.
-----
To see more of the Billings Gazette, or to subscribe to the newspaper,
go to http://www.billingsgazette.com
© 2004, Billings Gazette, Mont. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune
Business News.
Editor's Note: Elk have been eating lichen for
thousands of years, why would they die from it just now??????
Diet substance may have killed elk
Friday, March 26, 2004 Posted: 9:57 AM EST (1457 GMT)
CHEYENNE, Wyoming (AP) -- A substance found in
some weight-loss diet supplements -- and in a type of lichen -- may have
fatally poisoned more than 300 elk in Wyoming in recent weeks, scientists
say.
Scientists theorize the substance, usnic acid, may have caused the animals
to weaken and collapse -- too helpless to eat, drink or escape predators.
The chemical was extracted from tumbleweed shield lichen, which grows on
the ground in many northern states.
Captive elk fed it developed the same fatal illness; usnic acid poisoning
also has been documented in livestock, though cattle tend to recover.
Scientists say they cannot yet confirm their suspicion. For example, it
is not clear why the poisoning didn't affect the animals' livers -- as it
might in humans. Instead, the elk muscles appeared pale and sickly.
"That's one of the reasons we don't want to chalk this up to usnic acid
at this point," said Walt Cook, a wildlife veterinarian at Wyoming's state
veterinary lab in Laramie. "Either the usnic acid is affecting the elk
differently or it's not usnic acid at all. There may well be other compounds
in there that may be the toxic compounds."
Cook said it will take a few more months to confirm a cause.
Usnic acid has anti-bacterial properties and lichen containing it have
several uses in traditional medicine, including as a poultice. Put into pills,
it can promote weight loss by boosting metabolism.
Side effects from the substance have occurred, however. In January, the
Food and Drug Administration said more study is needed of three diet drugs,
including usnic acid.
In 2001, the FDA asked Syntrax Innovations to stop selling Lipokinetix,
a diet drug containing usnic acid, saying it was to blame for a number of
serious liver injuries in some people who used the drug more than two
weeks.
Usnic acid is still readily available over the Internet.
"As we learn of the information and evaluate the science behind it, we'll
proceed accordingly," said Kimberly Rawlings, an FDA spokeswoman.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Poison gas kills five bison in Yellowstone
By SCOTT
McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer
Five bison have died after being exposed to poison
gas in a geyser basin in Yellowstone National Park.
The dead animals were discovered March 10 in the Norris Geyser Basin. They
probably had been dead about a week, the National Park Service announced
Tuesday.
The two adults, two calves and a yearling, were found
"lying on their sides, with their feet perpendicular to their bodies," the
announcement said. "The unusual position of the carcasses indicates the bison
died very rapidly, as a group."
The bison probably succumbed to a combination of hydrogen sulfide and carbon
dioxide emitted by nearby thermal features.
Park scientists, lead by geologist Henry Heasler, surmise the animals were
grazing alongside the Gibbon River during an unusually cold and still night
about March 1, when a cold front passed through the area.
The weather probably caused the steam and toxic gases to remain close to
the ground and concentrate in lethal doses.
Hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide can accumulate in low areas when the
air is still because they are denser than air.
Some of the nearby vents spewed gas that was more than 200 parts per million
hydrogen sulfide, which is commonly known as "rotten egg" gas because of
its distinct smell.
Humans can easily detect the gas at levels as low as one part per million
and "are able to escape an area well before it reaches a toxic level," the
Park Service said.
"The fairly constant wind in the Yellowstone area dilutes and disperses gases
so that it would be almost unheard of for a park visitor to be overcome by
toxic fumes as the bison were," the Park Service said.
Still, animals sometimes fall to the toxic gases.
There is an area known as Death Gulch in the upper Lamar River Valley where
dead animals were found in the 19th century.
In 1899, a geologist found six bears, an elk and several rodents and other
small creatures there. Another biologist found seven dead bears there in
1899.
Other researchers have noted the presence of deadly gases in Yellowstone
over the years.
Yellowstone's Explosive Secret
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyoming, March 23, 2004
Old Faithful Geyser erupts in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. (Photo:
AP)
Online doomsday scenarios are swirling all over chat rooms telling visitors
to stay away. Yellowstone, they warn, could blow.
(CBS) For years, CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, scientists
have tried to understand the dynamic nature of Yellowstone National Park.
"It's beautiful up here, everybody should see this at one time or another,"
says one appreciative observer.
Scientisth Lisa Morgan may have unlocked one piece in the puzzle, deep below
the park's biggest lake.
"It is kind of the last unmapped frontier in Yellowstone National Park,"
says Morgan.
What she found looks more like the surface of the moon. Using sonar she's
identified a massive bulging dome the size of seven football fields. The
only other underwater dome in Yellowstone was the site of a major
explosion.
"The most extreme event, which occurred 13,800 years ago, went about as far
as five miles away from source," says Morgan.
It spewed boiling water, steam and rocks, and the fear of it happening again
started another explosion of sorts: this one on the Internet. Online doomsday
scenarios are swirling all over chat rooms telling visitors to stay away.
Yellowstone, they warn, could blow.
Yellowstone National Park sits on top of one of the most active volcanoes
in the world with more than 10,000 vents, geysers and bubbling hot springs.
That's part of the reason more than 3 million people come here each year.
So for Morgan it is important to clarify. She doesn't think the big dome
is ready to explode, but park ranger Hank Heasler says Yellowstone is
unpredictable.
"The bottom line is we still don't know all that much about what's going
on at Yellowstone," says Heasler.
So he takes the job of keeping visitors safe seriously, constantly monitoring
temperatures.
And that's not always easy. A trail near the Norris Geyser was closed last
summer and is still boiling hot enough to burn through shoes.
"If the temperatures here gets above boiling, then we know that there's a
potential for the water to just rapidly flash to steam and cause one of these
hydrothermal explosions," says Heasler.
Which is exactly what Old Faithful and her companion geysers do almost
daily and that's why scientists from around the world are watching this latest
discovery and wondering what nature has planned next.
© MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.rumormillnews.com
YELLOWSTONE & HIGH TIDE?
Posted By: WhiteRaven
Date: Monday, 15 March 2004, 1:09 a.m.
From a Reader (no source for any this information was given. I cannot
verify the earthquake mentioned. WR):
Yellowstone
"Also, intense goings-on in Yellowstone Park. 300 elk died overnight last
week with no viral agent discovered. Could be sulfide or CO 2 gas did them
in. Hydrogen sulfide levels are way up in the park. Definite sign of seismic
action and geothermal welling upward. There is a full scale disaster practice
called for March 21. Tourists are being turned away. Level of the bottom
of the lake is up 100 feet... a big bulge ready to pop. Something may blow
soon.
High tide of 7+ feet is due March 17-24 but near record high tides are
due in June and July, 9.0 feet +, which could influence fluid physics enough
BETWEEN the Rockies and the West coast to trigger a major earthquake of 7
or better. There is a 75% chance of a quake of this magnitude occurring,
but where it will occur is tough to nail down. It depends on structural stress
and where that stress is most critical. Last week in the park, there was
a 6.5 quake and 3.2 aftershock. If the tide triggers a quake and an eruption
in the Yellowstone caldera, there could be enough downwind clastics to affect
Midwest grain crops and send prices of them AND HEDGE METALS way up. St.
Helen's happened just this way. Fast with short notice. Stay tuned ......
A note of interest: within one week of high tide was when Mt St. Helen's
blew up here in Washington State, Pacific NW
777 Nez Pierce Indians Are Leaving Yellowstone Area
Molon4labe Email News List Molon4labe@xxx
The Bald Eagle, The Bird of FreedomGlides , gazing, calm and sure!
Nez Pierce Indians Are Leaving Cap Wilderness Area:
Other Indian tribes also leaving Yellowstone
AreaRumor Mill NewsPosted
By: NovadeDate: Thursday, 15 January 2004, 1:28 a.m.
While browsing I ran across a discussion on a forum indicating the Nez
Perce tribe were leaving the above area. Apparently tribal leaders White
Eagle and Smiling Bear held an emergency conference and decided the tribe
needed to pullback from the coastal areas as large game animals were doing
so.They are located in Oregon's Imnaha area.
They indicated they would follow the animals to Hell's Canyon and the
Cathedral Cave area. Other Indians in the area are moving in with tribes
in Idaho and are leaving the Yellowstone area. Reports also indicate the
animals and the Snake River itself are eerily calm. I cannot give anyone
a guarantee concerning this information but anyone living in this area should
be able to verify. There was a recent earthquake of 3.3in Washington and
five volcanoes have become active in Russia. Massive ash is said to be comming
from Shiveluch on Kamchatka Peninsula over the past 24 hours with local tremors
and thermal anomalies.
Klyuchevskaya Sopka and Bezimyanny are also spewing ash as will as Japan's
Mount Attoso. It is not out of the question these anomolies may be spreading
around the ring of fire through Alaska and the Pacific coastal areas.I do
not know how valid the information is concerning the local tribes but if
I lived in that area, I would take a look at it.When the animals begin a
retreat, it would seem serious.
March 4, 2004
Last modified March 4, 2004 - 1:53 am
Teton Fault quake monitors installed
Associated Press
JACKSON, Wyo. - A network of sensors being installed to monitor earthquakes
along the Teton Fault in northwest Wyoming should be completed by the end
of August, seismologist Harley Benz said.
The seismic network of seven to eight monitors will help emergency response
teams prepare for earthquakes, said Benz, who works for the U.S. Geological
Survey at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. The
agency that is installing the network of sensors in Jackson Hole.
The new sensors will provide more data about earthquakes than a network
of older monitors recently removed by the Bureau of Reclamation. Teton County
fought the BLM over removing the monitors but lost.
Benz said the new system will be able to tell scientists where the quake
is, how big it is and the distribution of ground shaking.
Once the network is completed, scientists will be able to project potential
earthquake effects such as landslides by mapping the distribution of ground
shaking.
"We can make the community more resilient to earthquakes," Benz said.
"These shake maps from an emergency point of view are very effective."
Earthquake prediction is not part of the program. But geologists say the
network would let residents know if the long-dormant Teton Fault moves.
Teton County Commissioner Bill Paddleford also wants to use the seismic
network to get vital information about earthquakes by being connected to
the National Earthquake Center, which globally monitors earthquakes 24 hours
a day.
"We'll be able to tell you within three to five minutes exactly where
the earthquake was and it's magnitude," Benz said. "We want to be able to
provide all the parameters that go into effective damage reduction strategies."
The entire network area will also include two in Idaho near Felt and Victor.
There are 400 to 500 monitoring stations all over the United States, Benz
said.
The federal government is paying the estimated $250,000 cost of installing
the sensors.
Copyright © 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
A REPORTER IN DENIAL OR TRYING TO KEEP US ALL
CALM?
When green trees are under water on only one side
of the lake, what does that tell you?
Yellowstone Lake dome unlikely to explode: Internet chatter about coming
cataclysm unsupported
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
There's no evidence that a large bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake
is something new, something growing or something dangerous, according to
a U.S. Geological Survey scientists.
Lisa Morgan, who has been mapping and studying Yellowstone National Park's
largest lake intensively, said a five-year analysis of the dome doesn't bear
out any of the cataclysmic claims circulated on the Internet and elsewhere
that the structure is ready to blow its top.
"We have no evidence there's been any physical changes to the structure
or chemical changes, for that matter," Morgan said Thursday.
This summer, certain media reports and Internet chatter played up the
discovery of the underwater dome, a rounded 100-foot tall formation just
south-southwest of Storm Point. At the time, the structure was called an
"inflated plain." Some took the term to mean that the dome was growing and
others inferred that it meant a disaster was lurking at Yellowstone on the
scale of the caldera-forming volcanic eruptions about 600,000 years ago.
As the story circulated, some called USGS and others with questions about
whether it was safe to travel to Yellowstone.
"Some people got very confused and very scared," Morgan said.
Over the fall and winter, scientists used computers to analyze thousands
of measurements taken of the dome in recent years. Specifically, they were
looking for signs that it was expanding or changing.
"At this point, we don't think we can see any differential movement,"
she said.
In fact, the land formation may have stopped moving a long time ago.
Morgan said she and other scientists believe that the dome was not formed
by magma churning up from a source far below the surface but was formed by
rhyolitic lava flows between 70,000 and 150,000 years ago.
Like the hilly and bumpy formations on Pitchstone Plateau and elsewhere
in Yellowstone, those flows shaped much of the Yellowstone Lake bottom that's
inside the caldera, Morgan said, and the dome appears to be in that mix.
Over time, it has been covered over by glacial deposits and lake sediments.
On the side of the dome are dozens of hydrothermal vents.
"There's nothing really to indicate this is new activity," she said. "It's
not something that grew out of nowhere in the last couple of days."
The vents, which spew sediments, bubbles and other material, contribute
to the hydrogen sulfide smell that researchers have smelled as they passed
over the area in a boat. The geothermal system on the lake bottom is probably
about the same size at Norris Geyser Basin, she said.
Contrary to some stories about the "inflated plain," Morgan said there
is no evidence that a hydrothermal event could trigger a massive geologic
explosion in Yellowstone.
"The systems really aren't physically connected," she said.
Morgan said she's hoping the new information will help inform the discussion
about the bulge, which became an international topic after stories claiming
the bulge could spell destruction for Yellowstone and the surrounding area.
These days, the "inflated plain" has temporarily been tagged with the
more benign-sounding "Weasel Creek/Storm Point Vent System."
It's still possible that the bulge could explode - but not nearly to the
scale that some have speculated, Morgan said.
An explosion, which is rare, might result in crater formations such as
Mary Bay or Turbid Lake nearby. The dome could also result in a relatively
tame collapse similar to what happened at Storm Point thousands of years
ago or it could crack and release fluids and pressure, similar to what once
happened at Sedge Bay.
Although the bulge doesn't appear to be some harbinger of catastrophe,
it still holds plenty of scientific value, including learning about how
hydrothermal systems evolve under water, Morgan said.
"I'm still very fascinated," she said.
Tue, 10 Feb 2004
From: barrymartin
Date: Monday, February 09, 2004
Subject: More info On Yellowstone
Thought you might find this important to report. Thanks for the work
you do. Barry Snyder
Message to All Peacemakers:
By Bennie LeBeau, Eastern Shoshone, Wind River Reservation, Wyoming
Member of the Council of Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth.
Our Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are calling for our prayers.
Many of you understand the relationship of the energy grid lines of heaven
and earth and its relationship with this next eclipse. They are like to the
nervous
system of your bodies and its wiring system. Earth Mother is being stressed
out by bad vibrations and some of us as well. With this increasing solar
activity, so it is with Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks sacred
sites that are asking for help. We have come together because our hearts
are responding for a change. This change is necessary for the survival of
our home planet Earth, our Mother. It is time to forgive and forget and move
forward into sacredness.
The words that have been given in prophecy by the Hopi, they have said,
"We are the people we have been waiting for." I am Bennie LeBeau from the
Eastern Shoshone Nation in Wyoming. I am also a member of the Council of
The Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth. I believe many of you may remember
what we are representing as Eastern Shoshone peoples in the Grand Teton
and the Yellowstone National Parks. This is part of our original homelands
written in our treaty as a sovereign country and that our cultural traditions
would not be forgotten in order to utilize these sacred sites areas.
Since September of 1999, we have been attempting to gain permission for our
most sacred ceremony the Sundance and other ceremonies to be allowed
in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Park, along with many other Indigenous
Nations of this country.
The park officials and the general public are beginning to see the
significance of why it is needed. Now it is most evident because of the seismic
volcanic activity in and around the Grand Teton and the Yellowstone National
Parks.
What we have helped escalate as humans is the disturbance to the web of
life on earth in these sacred site areas. Remembering the words from the
past by a power ful messenger, Chief Seattle stated, "Whatever befalls
the earth, befalls the sons of earth. . . the earth does not belong to man,
man belongs to the earth... all things are connected...man did not weave
the web of life; he is merely a strand in it...whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself."
On October 22, 2003 a message stated in July that the Yellowstone Park
rangers closed the entire Norris Geyer Basin because of the deformation of
the land and the excess temperature. There is an area there that is 28 miles
long and 7 miles wide that has bulged upward over five inches since
1996. This year the ground temperature on that budge has reached over 200
degrees. There was no choice but to close off the whole area. Everything
in that area is dying. The trees, flowers, and grasses resemble a dead zone
and are spreading outward. The animals are literally migrating out of the
park. This isn't hearsay. It is coming from people who have actually visited
the park in the last few weeks. The later part of July, one of the
park geologists discovered a huge bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake.
The bulge has already risen over 100 feet from the bottom of the lake.
The water temperature at the surface of the bulge has reached 88 degrees
and is still rising. Keep in mind that Yellowstone Lake is a high mountain
lake with a very cold-water temperature. The lake is now closed to the public.
It is filled with dead fish floating everywhere. The same is true of the
Yellowstone River and most of the steams in the park. Dead and dying fish
are filling the water everywhere. Many picnic areas in the park have been
closed and people that are visiting the park don't stay but a few hours or
a day or two and leave. The stench of sulfur is so strong that they literally
can't stand the smell.
Yellowstone is what geologists call a "super volcano". There are massive
calderas of molten fire beneath Yellowstone National Park. Geologists are
saying that every living thing within six hundred miles could be affected
in devastation. It could produce an ash cloud that will cover the entire
western U.S. clear to the Pacific on the west, British Columbia on the north,
the Mexican border on the south, and then out into the Dakotas, Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas on the east. Then the cloud could blow east because
of the prevailing winds, literally covering the entire nation with volcanic
ash.
I believe this to be of great importance to us at this time. The vision
is to pray for balance in this area. With our prayers, songs, drums and the
ways that we have been instructed in our spiritual teachings, no matter what
culture you/we are our hearts make the difference. If Yellowstone National
Park seismic activity continues then we could all be affected around the
earth. The reports on the seismic activity's spe ak for themselves. The 100
years of government management in the Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons have
disallowed our most important prayers and ceremonies to exist as all indigenous
tribes in this country. It is now time for us to act as a nation/world within
all countries to allow these sacred prayers and ceremonies into the National
Parks of Wyoming. Joseph (Hinmaton Yalatkit) 1830-1904, Nez Perce Chief,
said, "When ever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other,
then we will have no more wars. We shall all be alike-brothers of one father
and one mother, with one sky above us and one county around us, and one
government for all." Uniting our tribes of all cultures from the peaks in
the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone I s end a strong-hearted message to you
to awaken and respond now.
These sacred site areas are calling out to her caretakers all over the
world. Now is the time for uniting together and working in harmony. Together
our songs, our drums and our prayers speak the ancient language that exits
and are remembered in the sacred pictures written on the rocks, in the sacred
heartbeat of the land and in the sacred songs heard in the wind. We can bring
balance and harmony back to the land remembered by our ancestors of the past,
present and future generations.
Our mother is calling out to her caretakers. This is a great opportunity
for prayer work in our councils and other groups helping bring the indigenous
nations together and with all nations as well.
Yellowstone National Park representative, Rosemary Sucec, has received
this message. She is one of the liaison officers that relay messages to the
superintendents and other agencies in the parks. She is very interested in
bringing indigenous nations and others to do our work there. This Native
American perspective has been explained to groups that were from many indigenous
nations and other cultures that attended the Lewis and Clark Celebration
for Sacagawea's leadership role last May 2003, by others and myself. Because
of the reports of Yellowstone's disturbances at this time and its significance
they are NOW considering the outcome of our ancestral lands and usage in
a decision by the Grand Te ton and Yellowstone National Parks
Superintendents.
Today the spirits are calling for good medicine, for us all to awaken
with many blessings for all the things we are related to in harmony and balance.
We are returning to the sacredness for all living things, for the future
of our Mother Earth as part of Creator's creation and within the heavens
sacredness, she is helping to bless us all. This is a very important time
in our Mother Earth's history for humanities sake. Every thing is related
within and upon, what is above is below, heaven upon earth. Chief Seattle's
words, "When the last Redman has vanished from the earth and the memory is
only a shadow of a cloud moving across; the prairie, these shores and forests
will still hold the spirits of my people." We have not vanished but have
been reborn to do the work our ancestors did; it is time to step into the
moccasins of our ancestors with the wisdom, strength and knowledge at hand.
Thank you for your attention, and prayers please respond to:
Bennie E. LeBeau,
Eastern Shoshone Wind River Indian Reservation
Ft. Washakie, Wyoming
2331 Oak Lane
Riverton, Wyoming
307 857-6856
bzahants@hotmail.com or blebeau@Tcinc.net
Great Spirit Bless You,
1-25-04
Earthquake monitors to be reinstalled
JACKSON - An earthquake monitoring network around Jackson Lake that was
shut down in 2002 will be reinstalled and operational by the year's end,
federal officials said.
Commissioner Bill Paddleford persuaded the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
to revive the network in a visit to Washington, D.C., last week.
The missing sensors were a weak link in Teton County's emergency plan,
Paddleford said.
"This left a huge hole in our mitigation," he said. "We have to worry
about floods, fires, winter storms, seismic volcanic activity and national
security stuff. Now the hole will be filled."
The county will use $285,000 from Congress to reinstall the network of
earthquake sensors intended to provide critical data in the quake-prone valley
and for Jackson Lake Dam, which lies upstream of most of Teton County's
population.
The system will be monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey.
FROM:
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/01/26/build/wyoming/z-wyoming.inc
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=80182
Hotel guests treated for carbon monoxide exposure
msgjac
JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Eleven guests of the 49'er Inn and Suites were treated
for exposure to high concentrations of carbon monoxide.
Firefighters determined that the gas escaped from a broken connection
in two pipes leading from the motel's boiler beneath the rooms where the
victims were staying.
''This could have been potentially fatal,'' said Rusty Palmer, fire marshal
for the Jackson/Teton County Fire Department.
In one room, firefighters measured carbon monoxide levels of 300 parts
per million; 1,200 parts per million is quickly fatal. Palmer said the level
could have been much higher before the measurement.
Matt Shea, of Bozeman, Mont., Kale Paulson, of Portland, Ore., and Brad
Kastelitz and Jared Tait, of Spokane, Wash., called the front desk around
10 a.m. Jan. 17 and reported rapid heart rates and feeling dizzy and lightheaded,
according to police.
Motel owner Clarene Law said clerk Paul Wagner was unsure why the guests
were ill but called 911 in the interest of safety. ''I have such gratitude
because we had an astute clerk who made the identification,'' she said
Monday.
Some of the affected men were flown by helicopter and others drove to
Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello, Idaho., for treatment in a hyperbaric
oxygen chamber.
Workers repaired the broken pipe later in the day.
It is unknown how many people were affected. ''We did have a report that
other people in the building had reported flu-like symptoms, which is indicative
of carbon monoxide,'' Palmer said.
Law said the break may have been caused by a 5.0-magnitude earthquake
that shook Jackson on Jan. 7.
Carbon monoxide poisoning was blamed for the August 2001 death of Dr.
David Williams, of Polk County, N.C., at Snake River Lodge and Spa. His wife,
Joette, was injured.
Joette Williams sued Vail Resorts, parent company of the lodge, and won
a multimillion-dollar judgment.
AP-WS-01-24-04 1319EST
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1073468702645B222&set_id=1>
Minor earthquake rattles sleepy Wyoming
January 07 2004 at 11:45AM
Washington - An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7 rattled Jackson, Wyoming,
early on Wednesday, according to a report from the United States Geological
Survey (USGS).
The tremor, which occurred at 12.51am local time was centred 32km north-east
of Jackson in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said Butch Kinerney, a
spokesperson for the USGS.
"It was felt in Jackson," said Kinerney. "A 4.7 is enough to wake people
up, but we don't expect any damage. There may be some dishes rattling, that
kind of stuff, but it's not enough to do any structural damage."
"It's a resort area, mostly used for skiing," he said, adding that seismic
activity was not unusual in the area of Yellowstone National Park, also in
Wyoming.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<http://tv.ksl.com/index.php?nid=5&sid=68275>
Utah Dept. of Public Safety Earthquake Info.
WY Earthquake Serves as Wake Up Call
Jan. 7, 2004
Kimberly Houk Reporting
An earthquake shook northwestern Wyoming early this morning. It registered
a 5 on the Richter scale. An earthquake of that magnitude can cause damage,
but this one, 19 miles northeast of Jackson Hole, has had its greatest effect
as a wake-up call.
Maralin Hoff has been nicknamed the "Earthquake Lady" because it's her
job to make sure Utahns are prepared. And the Wyoming shaker gives her another
reason to spread the word. She says everyone can start with an Emergency
Kit.
Maralin Hoff, Dept. of Public Safety: “Children should have an ER
backpack by their bedsides. At your office, your vehicle, home, everywhere
you should have a kit. Put a band-aid in your purse. "
Hoff says most things you can find around your home, like a flashlight,
clothing, and first aid items. The key is making sure everything is in one
place.
Hoff: “It's just wise to have extra food stored at home, water
especially. You never know when or if our water system will ever be
contaminated."
Hoff says now is the time to get prepared. Wyoming's early morning earthquake
was one of 10 earthquakes to shake both Utah and Wyoming since Christmas
day. Four of the ten earthquakes were in central Utah near Nephi.
Bob Smith has studied earthquakes for decades. He teaches at the University
of Utah and is familiar with the area in Wyoming where the earthquake hit.
Bob Smith, U of U Professor: “This earthquake was felt over an area
at least 200 miles long. It was felt from southern Montana clear down to
Pocatello, Idaho."
Smith keeps a close eye on the seismic activity of the Wasatch Front.
He says although the Wyoming earthquake has no affect on Utah, the Wasatch
Front's fault line looks a lot like the Teton Fault line. Another reason
why an earthquake 200 miles away hit close to home for people worried about
emergency preparation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<http://www.casperstartribune.net/articles/2004/01/08/news/wyoming/a7116aab3559e55587256e150004f9ea.txt>
Earthquakes rattle Jackson
By NADIA WHITE
Star-Tribune staff writer
Four earthquakes shook Jackson Hole in the early morning hours
Wednesday.
The first temblor at 12:57 a.m. measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, the
largest recorded in Teton County history, according to the Wyoming State
Geological Society. It was followed by four aftershocks, all centered about
7 miles east of Kelly in the Gros Ventre Range.
Seth Clearman, resident manager of the Red Rock Ranch, near the epicenter
of the quake, said the flurry of quakes lasted until about 6:30 a.m.
"The first thing I thought was, 'Where's my kid and cover his head,'"
Clearman said. "Books fell off the bookshelves, picture frames came off the
wall. Was I scared? No. I was nervous."
He said the quake was bigger than usual and lasted longer, but he knew
what it was.
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations and the U.S. Geological Survey's
National Earthquake Information Center reported the quake was centered east
of Kelly and about 3 miles southeast of Lower Slide Lake in the Gros Ventre
River valley.
Wednesday's earthquakes come after smaller temblors were reported in Jackson
on Dec. 30 and near Newcastle on Sunday.
Wednesday's earthquake in Teton County did not occur on the Teton fault,
which is capable of generating a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, according to the
USGS.
Jackson resident Tat Maxwell said the first earthquake lasted five or
six seconds and started her dogs barking. Aftershocks, she said, awoke her
younger children.
"It feels like a really big truck just rambled by on the road next to
you, although there are no roads next to you. It's weird. It's eerie," she
said.
USGS reported a magnitude 3.7 earthquake occurred at 1:27 a.m., a magnitude
4.1 earthquake occurred at 1:44 a.m., and a magnitude 4.0 earthquake occurred
at 2:23 a.m. Wednesday.
Earthquakes are common in Teton County, though much less common in
northeastern Wyoming.
Wednesday's earthquakes were not noticeable in Yellowstone National Park,
70 miles north of the epicenter, although more sensitive seismic records
have not yet been consulted, park spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews said.
Grand Teton National Park spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs said many park employees
felt the quake, but that no damage to park buildings or property, or of
avalanches triggered by the quake, had been reported.
Bob Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah, said people
reported feeling Wednesday's quake as far from the epicenter as Cody, Pocatello,
Idaho, and southwestern Wyoming. He said earthquakes in the Gros Ventre Range
are not uncommon.
As recently as Dec. 30, an earthquake with a magnitude 3.5 occurred in
the same area at 11:16 p.m.
In 1925, small earthquakes were reported to have occurred in the same
general area as the Wednesday morning quakes and are thought to have played
a role in the huge landslide that created Landslide Lake and redirected the
Gros Ventre River, according to the Wyoming State Geological Society.
Smith, an expert on seismic activity in Yellowstone, said it is unclear
how activity in one area might affect seismic activity on other nearby faults.
But he said it does not appear that increased heat and geothermal activity
in the Norris Basin this summer is related to tectonic or magma activity,
but may instead be due to the drought and dropping water tables.
Newcastle gets a quake, too
On Sunday, residents near Newcastle reported an earthquake that registered
2.1 on the Richter scale just before 8 p.m. Earthquakes are much more unusual
in northeastern Wyoming than in northwestern Wyoming, according to state
records.
Sharon Fridley said she felt the quake and her husband heard it on their
ranch, known locally as the Old Snedecker Place, which has a fenceline on
the Wyoming stateline.
"We were just sitting in the living room and I felt the floor start vibrating
and rumbling; all the windows started rattling. It lasted for several seconds,
and I looked at my husband and we just said, 'What was that?'"
The Fridleys are official weather reporters for western Custer County
in South Dakota, so Sharon Fridley called the weather service to report that
she thought there'd been an earthquake.
She said the weather service later confirmed the magnitude of the quake
and said it was centered 7 miles west of Jewel Cave, near the Wyoming state
line.
"We've experienced here on this ranch just about everything now," Sharon
Fridley said. "Fires last summer, tornadoes, floods and now an earthquake."
Residents living 15 miles south and west of Newcastle felt the quake as
well.
Star-Tribune correspondent Whitney Royster contributed to this report.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4085057>
<http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-brf-wyoming-quake,0,6664522.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines>
<http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1590259>
<http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0107WyomingQuake07-ON.html>
<http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/National/AP.V6791.AP-BRF-Wyoming-Qua.html>
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3596013,00.html>
Subj: [earthchanges] s Yellowstone Worse than they say?
Date: 1/15/2004 6:36:14 PM Pacific Standard Time
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=3474
Is Yellowstone Worse Than They Say?
14-Jan-2004
The U.S. Geological Service and the media have been super- conservative
with their warnings about the Yellowstone supervolcano. But evidence is
accumulating that the park is in big trouble because the vast volcanic region
beneath its surface could be on a fast track to eruption. One source says,
"The American people are not being told that the explosion of this 'super
volcano' could happen at any moment. When Yellowstone does blow, some geologists
predict that every living thing within six hundred miles is likely to die."
The Idaho Observer reports that recent eruptions, 200 degree ground temperatures,
bulging magma and 84 degree water temperatures are worrying scientists who
are studying the area. Yellowstone National Park is on top of one of the
largest "super volcanoes" in the world, with a regular eruption cycle of
600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago-meaning the next one
is long overdue, and it could be 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St.
Helens eruption.
Rangers have closed part of the park because of land deformation and
high ground temperatures. Visitors are complaining about the stench of sulfur.
Everything in the area of the bulge is dying, including trees, flowers, grass
and shrubs. Even animals are leaving. Dead fish are floating in Yellowstone
Lake.
The Observer reports that "The irony of all this is the silence by the
news media and our government. Very little information is available from
Yellowstone personnel or publications. What mainstream news stories do appear
underscore the likelihood of a massive volcanic eruption."
So when's Yellowstone going to blow? Do the numbers.
Minor earthquake rattles sleepy Wyoming
January 07 2004 at 11:45AM
Washington - An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7 rattled Jackson, Wyoming,
early on Wednesday, according to a report from the United States Geological
Survey (USGS).
The tremor, which occurred at 12.51am local time was centred 32km north-east
of Jackson in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said Butch Kinerney, a
spokesperson for the USGS.
"It was felt in Jackson," said Kinerney. "A 4.7 is enough to wake people
up, but we don't expect any damage. There may be some dishes rattling, that
kind of stuff, but it's not enough to do any structural damage."
"It's a resort area, mostly used for skiing," he said, adding that seismic
activity was not unusual in the area of Yellowstone National Park, also in
Wyoming.
An Eye Witness Report On Yellowstone
12-31-03
I have recently received an email from George Shaffer, a visionary whom
I've had on the show. He constructed a future map of the United States. George
has recently become alarmed with the Yellowstone super-volcano area. I am
posting his email below.
Mitch,
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your web site and
the time and effort it must take to keep it active. Many of your viewpoints
and thoughts are very similar to mine and therefore it makes it an enjoyable
read. You had asked earlier for those that had visited Yellowstone National
Park to drop you an e-mail and state what we observed and think about that
area.
The wife and I had visited Yellowstone several times in the past but this
visit (mid September) was going to be just a little different. I had recently
had a vision that many parts of the Western USA and Western Canada would
become uninhabitable due to a catastrophic event. I clearly saw the affected
area in a tan color which indicated those places that would be mostly affected.
I have these areas posted on my earth change page and can be viewed by anyone
who is interested
(
http://www.bright.net/~gshaffer/earthchange.htm
).
During this vision I had a strong indication that the trouble spot was
Yellowstone National Park. We traveled there so that I might be able to meditate
and receive more information. I am sorry to say that I did not receive any
more information. Yellowstone National Park was as beautiful as ever. There
were parts of the park that were off limits because of increased activity
but the parts that we went to really did not look much different than they
did before. The indication I received, at the time of my vision, was that
this eruption would soon occur but we must keep in mind, geologically speaking,
200 years is just a snap of the fingers. I am a firm believer that we humans
get prophecy because we can do something about it. If we were to get prophecy
and would not be able to do anything about it, it would just make us paranoid.
We as humans, along with our positive thoughts, can delay or even change
prophecy.
I have rambled on long enough and please feel free to use this e-mail
anyway you like. I take this opportunity to thank you again for producing
a very fine web site. I visit your web site often and like to go to the future
map area (to check for changes).
ECTV Future Maps Page:
http://www.earthchangestv.com/maps/
George Shaffer's Map:
http://www.earthchangestv.com/maps/shaffer.gif
George's Email: mailto:gshaffer@bright.net
Second Man Accused of Damaging Yellowstone
Saturday November 22, 2003 8:46 PM
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - A second man has been charged over
damage to a geyser area at Yellowstone National Park, accused of not stopping
a friend who drove his truck in circles on the geyser's fragile soil before
getting stuck.
Austin B. Olsen, 19, of Battle Ground, Wash., was charged Wednesday with
aiding and abetting Adam R. Elford, 22, of Vancouver, Wash., in the Oct.
10 incident.
Elford was cited last month for driving off-road, damaging park resources,
having a loaded gun in his truck, improper food storage and driving on a
suspended license.
Investigators allege Olsen was accompanying Elford, who they say drove
his pickup truck around two barriers and spun ``doughnuts'' on fragile soil
known as sinter surrounding Lone Star Geyser before getting stuck.
The next morning, the two men asked two visitors for help, but were unable
to free the vehicle. They eventually went to the Old Faithful ranger station.
The U.S. attorney's office is reviewing the case to determine if felony
charges will be filed.
Workers have spent more than 80 hours trying to repair the damage.
Subject: Message to All Peacemakers i.e. Tetons & Yellowstone
from Bennie LeBeau, Eastern Shoshone, Wind River Reservation
Our Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks are calling for our prayers.
Many of you understand the relationship of the energy grid lines of heaven
and earth and its relationship with this next eclipse." They are like to
the nervous system of your bodies and its wiring system.
Earth Mother is being stressed out by bad vibrations and some of us as
well.
With this increasing solar activity, so it is with Yellowstone and Grand
Teton National Parks sacred sites that are asking for help. We have come
together because our hearts are responding for a change. This changeis necessary
for the survival of our home planet Earth, our Mother. It is time to forgive
and forget and move forward into sacredness. The words thathave been given
in prophecy by the Hopi, they have said, "We are the people we have beenwaiting
for."
I am Bennie LeBeau from the Eastern Shoshone Nation in Wyoming. I am also
a member of the Council of The Spiritual Elders of Mother Earth. I believe
many of you may remember what we are representing as Eastern Shoshone peoples
in the Grand Teton and the Yellowstone NationalParks. This is part of our
original homelands written in our treaty as a sovereign country and that
our cultural traditions would not be forgotten in order to utilizethese sacred
sites areas. Since September of 1999, we have been attempting to gain permission
for our most sacred ceremony the Sundance and other ceremonies to be allowed
in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone Park, along with many other Indigenous
Nations of this country. The park officials and the general public are beginning
to see the significance of why it is needed. Now it is most evident because
of the seismic volcanic activity inand around the Grand Teton and the Yellowstone
National Parks. What we have helped escalate as humans is the disturbance
to the web of life on earth in these sacred site areas.
Remembering the words from the past by a powerful messenger, Chief Seattle
stated, "Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of earth...the earth
does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth...all things are connected...man
did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it...whatever he
does to the web, he does to himself."
On October 22, 2003 a message stated in July that the Yellowstone Park
rangers closed the entire Norris Geyer Basin because of the deformation of
the land and the excess temperature. There is an area there that is 28 miles
long and 7 miles wide that has bulged upward over five inches since 1996.
This year the ground temperature on that budge has reached over 200 degrees.
There was no choice but to close off the whole area. Everything in that area
is dying. The trees, flowers, and grasses resemble a dead zone and are spreading
outward. The animals are literally migrating out of the park. This isn´t
hearsay. It is coming from people who have actually visited the park in the
last few weeks. The later part of July, one of the park geologists discovered
a huge bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake.
The bulge has already risen over 100 feet from the bottom of the lake.
The water temperature at the surface of the bulge has reached 88 degrees
and is still rising. Keep in mind that Yellowstone Lake is a high mountain
lake with a very cold-water temperature
The lake is now closed to the public. It is filled with dead fish floating
everywhere. The same is true of the Yellowstone River and most of the steams
in the park. Dead and dying fish are filling the water everywhere. Many picnic
areas in the park have been closed and people that are visiting the park
don´t stay but a few hours or a day ortwo and leave. The stench of sulfur
is so strong that they literally can´t stand the smell. Yellowstone
is what geologists call a "super volcano".
There are massive calderas of molten fire beneath Yellowstone National
Park.Geologists are saying that every living thing within six hundred miles
could be affected in devastation. It could produce an ash cloud that will
cover the entire western U.S. clear to the Pacific on the west, British Columbia
on the north, the Mexican border on the south, and then out into the Dakotas,
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas on the east. Then the cloud could blow
east because of the prevailing winds, literally covering the entire nation
with volcanic ash.
I believe this to be of great importance to us at this time. The vision
is to pray for balance in this area. With our prayers, songs, drums and the
ways that we have been instructed in our spiritual teachings, no matter what
culture you/we are our hearts make the difference. If Yellowstone National
Park seismic activity continues then we could all be affected around the
earth? The reports on the seismic activity´s speak for themselves. The
100 years of government management in the Yellowstone and The Grand Tetons
havedisallowed our most important prayers and ceremonies to exist as
allindigenous tribes in this country. It is now time for us to act as a
nation/world within all countries to allow these sacred prayers and ceremonies
into the National Parks of Wyoming. Joseph (Hinmaton Yalatkit) 1830-1904,
Nez Perce Chief, said, "When ever the white man treats the Indian as they
treat each other, then we will have no more wars
We shall all be alike-brothers of one father and one mother, with one
sky above us and one county around us, and one government for all."
Uniting our tribes of all cultures from the peaks in the Grand Tetons
and Yellowstone I send a strong-hearted message to you to awaken and respond
now. These sacred site areas are calling out to her caretakers all over the
world. Now is the time for uniting together and working in harmony. Together
our songs, our drums and our prayers speak the ancient language that exits
and are remembered in the sacred pictures written on the rocks, in the sacred
heartbeat of the land and in the sacred songs heard in the wind.
We can bring balance and harmony back to the land remembered by our ancestors
of the past, present and future generations. Our mother is calling out to
her caretakers. This is a great opportunity for prayer work in our councils
and other groups helping bring the indigenous nations together and with all
nations as well. Yellowstone National Park representative Rosemary Sucec
has received this message. She is one of the liaison officers that relay
messages to the superintendents and other agencies in the parks. She is very
interested in bringing indigenous nations and others to do our work there.
This Native American perspective has been explained to groups that were from
many indigenous nations and other cultures that attended the Lewis and Clark
Celebration for Sacagawea´s leadership role last May 2003, by others
and myself. Because of the reports of Yellowstone´s disturbances at
this time and its significance they are NOW considering the outcome of our
ancestral lands and usage in a decision by the Grand Teton and Yellowstone
National Parks Superintendents.
Today the spirits are calling for good medicine, for us all to awaken;
with many blessings for all the things we are related to in harmony and balance.
We are returning to the sacredness for all living things, for the future
of our Mother Earth as part of creator´s creation and within the heavens
sacredness, she is helping to bless us all. This is a very important time
in our mother earth´s history for humanities sake. Every thing is related
within and upon, what is above is below, heaven upon earth. Chief Seattle´s
words, "When the last Redman has vanished from the earth and the memory is
only a shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests
will still hold the spirits of my people." We have not vanished but have
been reborn to do the work our ancestors did; it is time to step into the
moccasins of our ancestors with the wisdom, strength and knowledge at hand.
Thank you for your attention, and prayers please respond to:
Bennie E. LeBeau, Eastern Shoshone
Wind River Indian Reservation
Ft. Washakie, Wyoming
2331 Oak Lane
Riverton, Wyoming
307 857-6856
Coastal Features Around Yellowstone Lake
SHORELINE SANDBARS YELLOWSTONE GEOLOGY COASTAL EROSION AR
On a recent family trip to Yellowstone Park, a geologist noted that parts
of the shoreline on Yellowstone Lake sport features more commonly seen on
coastal areas. With subsequent research and historical photos, he has shown
that the lake's shoreline has changed dramatically over the past 50 years.
Newswise — On a recent family trip to Yellowstone Park, University
of Arkansas geologist Stephen Boss noted that parts of the shoreline on
Yellowstone Lake sport features more commonly seen on coastal areas. With
subsequent research and historical photos, Boss has shown that the lake's
shoreline has changed dramatically over the past 50 years.
Studying the coastal processes of this sparsely developed lake could provide
insight into the natural processes that shape coastal shorelines and assist
the National Park Service in developing long-term management plans to preserve
the pristine lake shoreline and the abundant archaeological sites found there.
Boss and Barbara Pickup, graduate student in the environmental dynamics
program, reported their findings at the Geological Society of America meeting
in Seattle.
Yellowstone Lake is the largest lake at its altitude in the world, and
formed in an enormous crater following an extraordinarily violent series
of volcanic eruptions. Geologists call such craters "calderas," and part
of the Yellowstone Caldera later filled with melted glacier water to form
Yellowstone Lake. Such lakes typically have steep slopes that continue under
water and rapidly become very deep. However, on a family trip to Yellowstone
Lake this summer Boss, who studies coastal processes of shorelines, noted
that parts of the lake have landforms found in coastal areas, including sand
bars, lagoons and spits. Upon returning to work, Boss began looking for any
research on the lake’s shoreline.
"No one has examined the details of shoreline processes that are going
on there right now," Boss said.
Boss and Pickup ordered aerial photographs of Yellowstone Lake from the
U.S. Geological Survey Data Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. that date back to
1954. They focused in particular on West Thumb, located in the northwest
part of the lake. They are in the process of entering the photographs into
state-of-the-art Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to analyze
shoreline changes. An overlay of images from 1994 and 2002 shows visible
differences in the shoreline in only eight years.
"Through time, you can see the shoreline change," said Pickup.
Although sandbars, spits and lagoons traditionally are associated with
marine coastal ecosystems, large lakes, such as the Great Lakes, also form
such features through wave action and sediment transport. Yellowstone Lake
differs from the Great Lakes and the coast because it is an alpine, high
altitude lake and because it has very little development on its shoreline.
"We’re looking at physical processes that operate without significant
human interference of any kind," Boss said.
Boss and Pickup hope to return to Yellowstone Lake to study these formations
and chart their stability and erosion patterns.
"That could help determine where to locate park infrastructure and how
best to manage the area as a resource for people to enjoy," Boss said. Detailed
studies of these features also could lead to better understanding of the
geologic history of lake level variations that may be related to inflation
and deflation of the caldera as magma moves beneath the surface of Yellowstone
National Park.
© 2003 Newswise. All Rights Reserved.
Geologists monitor activity under Yellowstone Lake
Written by: Chris Vanderveen, 9NEWS Reporter
Posted by: Paola Farer, Web Producer created: 11/7/2003
9NEWS reporter Chris Vanderveen and Photojournalist Ken Mostek take a
look at the increased activity at Yellowstone Lake, Nov. 6, 2003.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - Every 600,000 years or so, a super volcano
has erupted in the area we now know as Yellowstone National Park.
It’s been 640,000 years since the last major eruption. 9NEWS Reporter
Chris Vanderveen and photojournalist Ken Mostek show us, some strange activity
at the park now have scientists asking, is the area due.
"I always pinch myself, I get paid to do this," said Lisa Morgan during
a recent hike through the park.
Morgan's “office” is the highest alpine lake in North America,
Yellowstone Lake, home to the occasional family of trumpeter swans and herds
of buffalo.
Morgan works for the U.S. Geological Survey. Her team has developed a
map of the lake's floor, the most detailed to date, and what they've found
is a very active lake bottom.
"The floor of Yellowstone Lake is anything but quiet," she said after
taking the most recent temperature reading in a nearby field of sand, and
grass and rock.
Morgan says that in the northern section of the lake, a 100-foot bulge,
as big as a 10- story building is forming.
The Norris Geyser basin, the most active thermal basin in the park, has
also been very active. The Steamboat geyser has erupted six times in the
past three years, including three eruptions already this year. Between 1991
and 2000 there were no eruptions.
This summer, park officials closed some nearby trails as a precaution.
One trail remains closed.
Despite this recent activity, Morgan said she isn’t expecting another
major volcanic eruption at this time. She said the last eruption was about
10,000 time greater than the Mount Saint Helens eruption. Another eruption
on a similar scale would kill all life within a 600-mile radius, which includes
the city of Denver.
"No I don't think an explosion is imminent," said Morgan. She said that
the bulge under the lake, at worst, would form a crater the size of a pond.
Morgan said one theory about the latest activity under the lake is that
it has been fueled by the drought. Less precipitation has prompted the water
underneath the area to heat to abnormally high levels.
(Copyright 2003 by 9NEWS KUSA-TV. All Rights Reserved)
YELLOWSTONE roads closed until winter season
Cody Enterprise, WY
<http://www.codyenterprise.com/articles/2003/11/03/sports/sports2.txt>
Yellowstone roads closed until winter season
Yellowstone Park roads closed for the season at 8 a.m. Monday.
The closure will allow snow to accumulate in preparation for the winter
season.
The exception is the road from the North Entrance at Gardiner, Mont.,
to the Northeast Entrance at Cooke City, Mont., which remains open year-round
to automobile travel. This road is subject to temporary closures, and chains
or snow tires may be required at times because of hazardous winter driving
conditions.
The fishing season in Yellowstone also closed at 10 p.m. Sunday throughout
the park, superintendent Suzanne Lewis said.
Roads are scheduled to reopen - depending on sufficient snowpack - for
the winter season to over-snow vehicles at 7 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 17.
Several changes will be implemented this winter.
Everyone entering the park by snowmobile must have a snowmobile entrance
reservation, and a total of only 950 snowmobiles will be allowed in the park
each day.
For those traveling with a commercial guide (80 percent of all snowmobile
entries will commercially guided), reservations will be made through that
company.
Anyone traveling independently and operating a personal or rented snowmobile
must make a snowmobile entrance reservation by calling Xanterra Parks and
Resorts (307) 344-7311.
There is a charge for the snowmobile entrance reservation, and visitors
also will be required to pay the park entrance fee.
All commercially guided operators will be required to use snowmobiles
that meet the park's best available technology (BAT) requirements. For
non-commercially guided machines, BAT snowmobiles are not required this
winter.
All snowmobile operators must have a valid state driver's license; no
learner's permits are allowed.
Groomed roads will begin to close to over-snow vehicle use at 9 p.m. Sunday,
March 7, 2004, with the closure of the Mammoth to Norris road. The next morning
the roads from Norris Junction to Madison Junction and Norris Junction to
Canyon will close. All remaining groomed roads will close to over-snow vehicle
use at 9 p.m. on Sunday, March 14.
Non-motorized travel in the form of bicycle roller blades and roller skis
will be allowed this fall as long as weather permits. Specific information
on these types of activities be obtained by contacting the park.
Travelers should contact park headquarters at (307) 344-7381 for current
road and weather conditions.
For more information on visiting the park during the winter, including
the park's 2003-2004 Winter Trip Planner, visit
www.nps.gov/yell/planvisit/winteruse/index.htm or call (307) 344-7381.
CWD discovered in basin
The first case of chronic wasting disease in the Big Horn Basin was recently
confirmed.
SENATE passes $19.7B Interior budget
Billings Gazette, MT
... The bill includes nearly $6 million for restoration of the Old House
at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. It also includes ...
<http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/11/04/build/state/54-budget.inc>
'HE seemed to come almost straight down'
Cody Enterprise, WY
The investigation into Wednesday's fatal crash of a Federal Express plane
trying to land at Yellowstone Regional Airport could take six months.
...<http://www.codyenterprise.com/articles/2003/11/03/news/news1.txt>
By CAROLE CLOUDWALKER
The investigation into Wednesday's fatal crash of a Federal Express plane
trying to land at Yellowstone Regional Airport could take six months.
But Mike Becker, manager of Yellowstone Regional Airport, says YRA is
just as safe as it was before the accident, and there is no need for airline
passengers or others to fear for their safety.
"Passengers shouldn't feel frightened on flights in or out of Cody," Becker
said Monday. "The airport is as safe as it ever was."
The cause of the accident that claimed the life of pilot Donald Rhodes,
37, of Casper will be uncertain, at least until the National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) completes its investigation, Becker said.
The plane that crashed at 8:53 a.m. Oct. 29 was a Cessna Grand Caravan
208 single engine turbo-prop operated by FedEx. That airplane features de-icing
equipment in its wings. The plane was owned by Corporate Air of Billings.
The plane was on final approach to the airport when it struck the Greybull
Highway and skidded into Alkali Lake, coming to rest on its top.
The aircraft was on a routine daily flight from Casper to Cody, and was
about half full of packages and letters, according to reports from FedEx
and the Cody Police Department.
"The plane was half full, weight-wise," said Kevin Smith, operations manager
for FedEx in Cody.
A snow squall swept through the area as the plane approached YRA. Weather
conditions generally were poor, and officials speculate that because of that,
Rhodes probably was making an instrument landing.
The NTSB completed its on-site investigation Friday, Becker said. The
aircraft was trucked to Colorado, and parts may be taken to various destinations
for further investigation, he added. A team of investigators from the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) also was in Cody to investigate the crash.
The pilot, who was the only person on board, is thought to have died upon
impact with the highway.
Rhodes had been a commercial pilot for more than 10 years. He graduated
from Colorado Northwestern Community College in Rangely, Colo., in 1985 with
an A.S. in aviation technology. He had flown for FedEx, Rio Grande Aviation
and Airborne Express.
He and his family lived in Casper for the past six years. A memorial service
for Mr. Rhodes will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the chapel of Bustard's Funeral
Home in Casper.
'He seemed to come almost straight down'
The investigation into Wednesday's fatal crash of a Federal Express plane
trying to land at Yellowstone Regional Airport could take six months.
E.
gate will be closed nights
Road construction plans call for Yellowstone Park's east gate to be closed
every night for the next two summers.
By BUZZY HASSRICK
Road construction plans call for Yellowstone Park's east gate to be closed
every night for the next two summers.
For 2004 and 2005 the Sylvan Pass-East Entrance road also will be open
for only two four-hour "windows" for most of September and closed completely
for most of October.
The road, however, will be open with no delays for the long Memorial Day,
Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends in 2004 and '05.
The looming three-year road project is causing concern among Cody
merchants.
"They're all jumpy about it," said chamber director Gene Bryan, who has
been fielding calls this fall about the future project. "We've been through
it (road construction) before, but we've just had a couple of decent
years."
To soften the impact, the chamber's Transportation Committee has participated
in drafting the road-work schedule.
"I think it's fair," Bryan said of the timetable. "It's got to happen."
The weather and altitude of the project area mean Sylvan Pass will be
an "enormous challenge," he added.
The contract is expected to be awarded this winter with construction to
start on the first phase of the three-phase project in spring 2004. Each
phase is scheduled for one year.
The first 6-mile segment starts on the east side of Sylvan Pass and continues
toward the East Entrance.
After that bid is let, the chamber will meet with the contractor and travel
groups like AAA about providing information to travelers, Bryan said.
"It's a fine line about how much to say," he said. "Road construction
is a fact of life.
"We must be honest but don't want to scare off people."
Complicating the promotion to tourists of Cody's so-called "second entrance
to Yellowstone" - the Northeast Entrance at Cooke City - is the plan for
an unrelated YNP road project to close Dunraven Pass all summer in 2004.
That means tourists in the park can reach the northeast gate only via Mammoth
Hot Springs.
(Original plans called for Dunraven Pass to be closed all summer in 2003,
but a glitch in the bidding process delayed the beginning of construction
and allowed the road to remain open.)
The 2004 schedule for the Sylvan Pass project includes these dates:
May 7-31: Road will be open with 30-minute delays.
May 31-Sept. 6: Road will be open 8 a.m.-8 p.m. with 30-minutes delays,
and closed 8 p.m.-8 a.m. to allow a full shift of overnight work.
Sept. 7-Oct 3: Road will be open 6-10 a.m. and 6-10 p.m. with no delays.
Oct. 3: Road will close at 10 p.m. and remain closed to all travel for
the season.
Road will be open with no delays on three holiday weekends: 6 p.m. May
28 to 6 a.m. June 1; 6 p.m. July 2 to 6 p.m. July 5; and 6 p.m. Sept. 3 to
6 a.m. Sept. 7.
SCAVENGERS benefit by dining with the wolves, find new UC ... UC Berkeley
(press release), CA
... of the grey wolf, one of the largest, most efficient predators in
North America and the subject of controversy when it was reintroduced to
Yellowstone National ...
<http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/11/04_wolves.shtml>
Geyser area damaged, officials say
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
10-29-03
A man from Vancouver, Wash., is facing numerous federal charges after
he illegally drove into the Lone Star geyser area at Yellowstone National
Park and caused significant damage.
Adam Roy Elford, 22, drove his Toyota Tacoma pickup around a locked barricade
at the Lone Star parking lot, down the 2.5-mile trail to the geyser and then
around the geyser's cone and into a surrounding meadow, park officials said
Tuesday.
Elford has been charged with operating a vehicle off road, injuring mineral
resources, possession of a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, improper food
storage and operating a motor vehicle with a suspended driver's license.
The incident started on the evening of Oct. 10, when Elford and a companion
arrived at the Lone Star parking lot, about five miles south of Old Faithful.
Park officials said Elford drove around the locked gate and onto the asphalt
trail that's reserved for bicyclists and pedestrians.
At the end of the trail, Elford and his companion moved a log barrier
and drove around the cone of the geyser and into a nearby meadow before getting
stuck in soft soil, the Park Service said. The pair then set up camp, started
a fire and spent the night.
The next morning, Elford and his companion walked to Old Faithful, where
they persuaded a couple to help them. But when they got to Lone Star, the
couple "realized the gravity of the situation," refused to help and drove
back to Old Faithful, park officials said. Elford and his companion then
reported the incident at the Old Faithful Ranger Station.
Park rangers went to Lone Star, investigated the scene, then took Elford
into custody and transported him to the jail in West Yellowstone, Mont.
His friend, whose name has not been released, was not arrested but was
cited for his part in the damage to the park's resources.
Elford made his initial appearance in federal court Oct. 13 and was released
on $5,000 bond.
Park officials are still assessing the damage at Lone Star, which includes
tire tracks around the geyser and through the meadow.
The U.S. attorney's office in Cheyenne will seek full restitution from
Elford and his companion for all restoration costs, park officials said.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
Yellowstone:Steamboat erupts for 4th time in 18 months
From:
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/news/item.php?keyid=6565&category=1
The Billings Gazette
October 27, 2003
Steamboat erupts for 4th time in 18 months
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
The roar of the water and steam was unmistakable.
A law-enforcement ranger living near Norris Geyser Basin heard it Wednesday
evening and quickly called the communications office at Yellowstone National
Park headquarters.
News spread quickly that, for the third time this year, the largest geyser
in the world was erupting.
Steamboat geyser, one of the most celebrated and wildly unpredictable
geysers in the park, put on a show for the few people who were there to see
it.
Henry Heasler, Yellowstone´s lead geologist, got to Norris around
9 p.m. in time to see Steamboat roiling loudly in the vigorous steam phase
that follows an eruption of water.
"It was a crystal clear night," Heasler said. "It was very awesome to
be in such a quiet, peaceful place and hear and feel this very powerful low
roar."
When Heasler and several others returned to Steamboat Thursday evening,
the geyser was still spouting a thick cloud of steam high into the sky. He
estimated the plume was 350 to 500 feet high.
"It was impressive," Heasler said.
Park scientists have yet to determine how high the eruption went or how
much water it released. That information will be drawn from measurements
taken at Norris and compiled over the next week or so.
Anytime Steamboat erupts, it´s a special event in Yellowstone.
And it´s been happening more frequently lately.
The geyser, which has had intervals ranging from four days to 50 years,
has had more major eruptions in the 21st century than any time since the
early 1980s. The geyser fell silent from 1991 until May of 2000. Since then,
it has erupted five times: April 2002, September 2002, March 2003, April
2003 and on Wednesday.
During a typical eruption at Steamboat - if there is such a thing - water
can shoot hundreds of feet into the air for 20 to 40 minutes, followed by
a long steam phase.
More about Steamboat Geyser
Throughout the summer, Steamboat had frequent minor eruptions spewing
water and steam, but there was nothing that tipped off geologists that Steamboat
would burst into a major eruption this week.
Heasler said he was looking at Steamboat on Tuesday and saw that an unusual
amount of steam was flowing out during a minor eruption.
"But there were no seismic precursors or anything like that," Heasler
said.
Water and temperature instruments near Steamboat show that the eruption
happened at 8:25 or 8:26 p.m. Wednesday.
When Heasler arrived about a half-hour later, a cool mist was falling
on Norris Geyser Basin from the hot water that had been expelled hundreds
of feet into the air, cooled and was falling back to earth.
"As I was walking toward it, there was the large, deep roaring sound and
occasionally you could feel it in the ground," Heasler said.
With the steam phase in full gear, witnesses on the nearby boardwalk had
to shout to be heard. Meanwhile, a fine layer of gray silica coated the walkway
and fogged visitors´ glasses.
As the air temperature cooled, the water on the boardwalk froze during
the night, prompting park officials to close the boardwalk for safety.
"It was a sheet of ice and very treacherous," Heasler said.
The boardwalk reopened after the ice melted in the sunlight.
The latest eruption at Steamboat may help scientists unravel some of the
mysteries behind its sporadic behavior.
In February, geologists placed two gauges on the boardwalk at Norris to
measure water flow and temperature. Another is attached along Tantalus Creek,
which drains about 97 percent of the water from the basin to Gibbon River.
Over the winter, Heasler and other geologists will look at the data
they´ve collected to see if any patterns emerge that are associated
with an eruption at Steamboat.
"It´s not to make predictions but to see what it´s telling us
about how Steamboat works and how Norris works," Heasler said.
Norris is the hottest geyser basin in Yellowstone. Geologists studying
the area don´t have a clear understanding of the subterranean system
where heated water churns in a complex network of plumbing.
But they do know that when Steamboat erupts, nearby Cistern Spring empties
and takes a few days to fill up again. Heasler and others are wondering whether
Steamboat has other effects at Norris that aren´t so easy to spot.
"Maybe there are a lot more subtle influences of Steamboat eruptions around
the whole basin," he said. "There´s a tremendous amount of heat, water
and pressure in that area."
There are other mysteries at Norris that may or may not be connected,
including rising temperatures in the basin that got so hot this summer that
certain portions had to be temporarily closed to the public earlier this
year.
Geologists will spend years trying to figure out how it all works. But
Heasler, who missed some of the previous action at Steamboat, couldn´t
resist simply basking in the glow of having had the opportunity to witness
a rare and spectacular event at Yellowstone.
"It did inspire awe," he said.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
Scientists find major mercury emissions in Yellowstone
By MIKE STARK
Gazette Wyoming Bureau
The hissing and huffing hillsides of Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone National
Park are doing more than just blowing off a little steam.
Scientists measuring mercury levels in the park last month were stunned
by what they found near the base of the mountain: probably the highest levels
of mercury at an undisturbed natural area that has ever been recorded
scientifically.
"I looked at it and did a double take," Mike Abbott, a scientist with
Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, said Tuesday. "I
thought my instrument was busted."
Abbott said several areas between Mammoth and Norris Geyser Basin showed
"fairly high" levels of mercury, which is a highly toxic pollutant often
associated with volcanic areas.
That information is helping scientists answer a crucial question about
Yellowstone: whether the park is an important contributor of mercury in the
atmosphere.
The research plays into a larger national issue as the federal government
works to regulate mercury emissions from industrial sources such as coal-fired
power plants. If places like Yellowstone contribute significant amounts of
mercury to the air, one theory goes, then regulations on man-made sources
may not be as effective as once thought.
Although man-made mercury emissions are pretty well understood, not much
is known about natural emissions.
But after their research this fall, scientists have a better grasp on
the role that Yellowstone might play.
"In my mind, it's a potentially big source," Abbott said.
Preliminary estimates from measurements taken in Yellowstone in early
September seemed to indicate relatively low levels of mercury. But data collected
later in the month, and made public Tuesday, showed otherwise.
Judging by what was measured at Roaring Mountain and other nearby spots
in the park, Abbott said it's conceivable -- though highly speculative at
this point, he emphasized -- that Yellowstone Park could emit as much mercury
as all the coal-fired power plants in Wyoming.
"That's not a real estimate but something based on just a few measurements,"
Abbott said. "It could even be bigger than that, we just don't know."
Several places in Yellowstone showed signs of mercury in the air at levels
higher than background levels at locations not associated with volcanic activity,
mining operations, power plants or other known sources.
But it's the corridor between Mammoth and Norris that has piqued the curiosity
of researchers.
Abbott said one possibility seems to be that the higher-than-expected
levels of mercury along that stretch might be associated with the acidic
sulfate system in that area.
Places like Norris basin, Frying Pan Spring and Roaring Mountain seem
to point to a connection between the mercury levels and acid sulfate features.
"We haven't gotten it figured out yet but there seems to be some significant
sources there," Abbott said.
At Roaring Mountain, Abbott measured mercury emanating from the clay hillside
at up to 2,400 nanograms per square meter per hour, significantly higher
than measurements of 200-700 at other sites in the Norris-Mammoth corridor.
By comparison, background levels away from geothermal areas range from zero
to 10.
more on mercury
Abbott said he was shocked by the measurements at Roaring Mountain and
returned to Yellowstone last week to double-check his figures.
"It knocked me over," he said, adding that he's never seen numbers so
high for a natural area that hasn't been mined. "It's one of the highest,
if not the highest, ever measured."
Abbott said the mercury from Yellowstone poses no danger to visitors.
But, he said, measurements were only taken at a select number of sites.
The unusually high level of mercury raises tantalizing questions about total
mercury emissions at Yellowstone, Abbott said.
"Yellowstone is a large area. Now that we know where to look, we'd like
to do more detailed measurements to produce a reasonably accurate estimate
of total emissions," he said.
Once that happens, federal regulators will have a better idea of how much
mercury is emitted by natural sources and how much comes from man-made
operations.
In December 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it
would require coal-fired power plants, considered to be the largest source
of mercury emissions in the country, to reduce their discharge of the toxic
metal.
Mercury from power plants often settles over rivers, lakes and other waterways
and can contaminate fish, according to the EPA. When people eat contaminated
fish, especially those with high levels of the chemical, they are at a higher
risk of neurological and developmental damage, particularly in children and
developing fetuses, the agency says.
The amount of mercury in the air has been rising in the last century.
About 158 tons of mercury is emitted into the air each year, according to
government officials.
No one's sure exactly how mercury moves in the atmosphere and it can be
difficult to pinpoint where it comes from without intensive testing.
Until now, no one had tried to quantify Yellowstone's contributions.
Abbott said he's hoping INEEL and other researchers, including the U.S.
Geological Survey and several universities, will be able to get funding to
take a more comprehensive look at Yellowstone's emissions.
"That's going to be a big job," he said.
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
Subj: YELLOWSTONE - Personal Report of a Visitor - 10 - 14 -03
Date: 10/14/2003 9:05:23 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: G
To: Dee777
WE ARE HOME FROM OUR QUICK TRIP TO YELLOWSTONE.
WE WANT YOU TO KNOW THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS ARE OUR OWN AND BASED ON WHAT
WE HAVE READ IN THE PAST, OBSERVED, AND OUR INTUITIVE FEELINGS. BOTH NANCY
AND I, COMBINED, HAVE VISITED YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK FOURTEEN (14) TIMES
OVER THE PAST 60 YEARS. SOME OF THESE TRIPS WERE TOGETHER; SOME APART. OUR
MORE RECENT TRIPS BEGAN IN 1988 WHERE WE WERE AMONG THE LAST CARS TO ENTER
THE SOUTH END BEFORE THE ROADS WERE CLOSED DUE TO THE FIRE. THE PARK WAS
AGAIN VISITED IN 1995, 1997 AND 2001 IN ADDITION TO THIS ONE IN OCTOBER
2003.
I MUST SAY THAT OVER THE YEARS THE ACTIVITY HAS PICKED UP, BUT WE FEEL
MUCH OF THAT IS DUE TO BETTER ROADS, NEW AND IMPROVED BOARDWALKS AND GREATER
AREAS MADE MORE ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC. WE HAVE ALSO BEEN IMPRESSED BY
THE INCREASE IN GEYSER ACTIVITY TO THE WEST OF OLD FAITHFUL AND THE ONGOING
CHANGES AT MAMMOUTH HOT SPRINGS.
WE SPECIFICALLY SPENT MORE TIME AT THE NORRIS GEYSER BASIN THIS TRIP WHERE
OTHERS HAD EXPRESSED CONCERNS AS TO THE CLOSING OF THE BOARDWALK BETWEEN
GREEN DRAGON AND PORKCHOP GEYSERS. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME OBSERVING STEAMBOAT
GEYSER, WHICH IS THE TALLEST GEYSER IN THE WORLD WITH ERUPTIONS UP TO 300
FEET. IT ERUPTS EVERY 4 - 50 YRS BUT IN THE PAST 2 YRS IT HAS ERUPTED TWICE
EACH YEAR; THE LAST ERUPTION WAS APRIL 29TH.
I MEDITATED AND FELT THE GROUND FOR SOME TIME AS NANCY MADE THE ROUNDS
ON VARIOUS TRAILS IN THE AREA. I DID NOTE ABOUT 12-20 SMALL, RECENT GROWTH
TREES, 4-6 FEET HIGH, DYING ON THE UPHILL SIDE OF STEAMBOAT GEYSER. THE DIAMETER
OF THIS IMMEDIATE AREA IS ACTUALLY QUITE SMALL, MAYBE 50 FEET OR LESS. THIS
IS SMALL WHEN COMPARING OTHER GEYSERS AND PROBABLY DUE TO ITS INFREQUENT
ERUPTIONS. THIS GEYSER BOILS CONTINOUSLY SENDING WATER A FEW FEET TO 30 FEET
IN THE AIR IN ABOUT A 10-FOOT DIAMETER AREA. I HAD NO -- FEELINGS OF DANGER,
DOOM OR APREHENSION IN THIS AREA!
NANCY HAD SIMILAR FEELINGS ALTHOUGH WAS A BIT TIRED AFTER HER LONG,
EXPLORATORY WALK FROM GEYSER TO GEYSER WITHIN THE NORRIS BASIN. SHE DID CONFIRM
THE REPORTED CLOSURE OF THE BOARDWALK BETWEEN GREEN DRAGON AND PORKCHOP GEYSERS,
BUT FELT THIS WAS SIMPLY A SAFETY PRECAUTION ON THE PART OF THE PARK SERVICE
DUE TO NEW VENTING ACTIVITY CLOSE TO THE WALKWAY.
UPON PARKING THE CAR AND BEGINNING OUR EXCURSION AT THE NORRIS BASIN GEYSER
AREA, WE ENCOUNTERED A HERD OF ELK NEAR THE PARKING LOT AND PATH DOWN TO
THE BASIN. THEN WE ENCOUNTERED A BUGLING BULL NOT MORE THAN 50 FEET FROM
US AND WATCHED AS HE CAME TOWARD THE TRAIL AND CROSSED NOT MORE THAN 15 FEET
AWAY FROM US. AS WE CONTINUED TO WALK WE ENCOUNTERED A COW ELK ENTERING OUR
PATH AND SHE PASSED WITHIN 10 FEET OF US WITH LITTLE CONCERN AS TO OUR
PRESENCE.
I MENTION THIS, AS WELL AS OUR OBSERVATIONS OF OTHER NUMEROUS ELK AND
BISON IN VARIOUS AREAS, TO STATE THE ANIMALS SEEMED VERY COMPLACENT AND AT
EASE.
WHAT DID SURPRISE US AND GAVE ME A FEELING OF DANGER WAS JACKSON LAKE
-- THE ENTIRE NORTH END IS VOID OF WATER! I NEVER KNEW JACKSON LAKE WAS CREATED
AS AN IRRIGATION RESEVOIR FOR, AND PAID BY, IDAHO POTATO FARMERS YEARS AGO.
THEY MUST HAVE BEEN WATERING A LOT OF POTATOES! ALSO, WE NOTED YELLOWSTONE
RIVER WAS DOWN CONSIDERABLY AND SIMILARLY WAS YELLOWSTONE LAKE.
SCIENTISTS HAVE LONG UNDERSTOOD, WITH YEARS OF RESEARCH IN FAULTS AND
VOLCANOLOGY TO BACK THEM UP, THAT YELLOWSTONE'S GEYSER ACTIVITY IS ACTUALLY
A NATURAL POP-OFF VALVE THAT WORKS EXTREMELY WELL. HOWEVER, WATER ACTS AS
A COOLENT AND RATHER THEN SPEWING LAVA IT SHOOTS WATER SKYWARD. IF I WERE
TO STATE ANY FEELINGS OF UNEASEINESS, IT WOULD ONLY BE DUE TO THE LACK OF
WATER AND WHAT WAS CAUSING IT!
IS THIS THE EFFECTS OF A REGIONAL DROUGHT, OR GLOBAL WARMING? WITHOUT
ADAQUATE WATER MORE THAN STEAM WILL VENT?
Date: 10/10/2003 2:59:37 PM Pacific Daylight Time
From: oye@xxx
Thought you'd be interested in this. My sister is married to a certain
geologist. He was working in the underground caverns near New Madrid. They
are concerned of a huge quake happening in the Midwest like previously in
1811 & 1812. He and others were pulled from the research and told to
get to Yellowstone ASAP. My sister told us just 4 weeks ago that he cannot
talk about it. Anyone talking to the media or family will be arrested and
detained without counsel. She said he and others were very afraid. Another
friend drives a truck all over the US. He has been taking loads out of the
area and transferring business and factory equipment to places farther East.
They won't tell him either. This has been going on since this past March
and is picking up speed as the year comes to a close.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 10, 2003
Danger in Yellowstone caldera may be eons away
BY SCOTT CANON
Knight Ridder Newspapers
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - (KRT) - When European settlers wandered upon
this otherworld of gurgling mud pits and angry geysers, they described it
as a place where hell bubbled up."
They didn't guess, as geologists believe now, that three times in the
last 2 million or so years, hell blasted the earth's crust here with a fury
that can barely be imagined.
Most recently, some 640,000 years ago, Yellowstone's rage toppled
mountainsides, changed the course of rivers and sprayed ash ankle deep over
all of what is now the Western United States.
So there's understandable interest in whether it might blow again. And
when.
Fresh high-technology studies of the underground cauldron - and discovery
of a bulge on the floor of Yellowstone Lake - show anew the region as
geology-in-the-making.
There's evidence that the bulge - described by one scientist as an "inflated
plain" - might be throbbing from the pressure that pushed it up in the first
place.
That detection has scientists captivated, not frightened, even as it fills
amateur geologists with dread.
Those laymen worry that the pressure cooker of Yellowstone is set to
burst.
Even smaller blasts - say the size of Mount St. Helens - that come about
every 20,000 years or so can rearrange Yellowstone's scenery. The most recent
of those was 70,000 years ago.
Some urge government engineers to gradually vent steam and magma by drilling,
rather than wait for a seemingly imminent, giant and calamitous blast.
"If nothing is done there will be an unimaginable disaster," went discussion
at one Internet discussion site. "But nobody even seems to be thinking about
it."
But the geologists who explore the caldera - the collapsed supervolcano
that is Yellowstone - share neither such alarmist doom nor faith in methods
for taming the forces boiling underground.
For starters, drilling here would spoil the natural setting of the world's
first national park in 1872, said park geologist Hank Heasler.
What's more, he said, it would do no good. The magma chamber miles below
the park is mostly like a hardened sponge and is essentially self-sealing.
"Besides, it's too big," he said, noting the caldera measures 35 miles
by 45 miles. "We're on the skin of the apple. We can leave little bruises,
but we can't affect the flavor of the fruit."
Government and university scientists dismiss new worries about Yellowstone,
about the bulge beneath the lake, and about recent changes at the park's
Norris geyser basin. Mostly, they marvel at their out-sized laboratory.
They point out that, literally, the landscape of Yellowstone is always
shifting. Last year, typical for the era when such measurements have been
made, there were about 2,300 earthquakes in the park.
"Geologists usually look at something that formed millions of years ago
and is now dead," said Lisa Morgan, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist. "But
in Yellowstone, it's something that's happening right now."
The bulge, discovered with newly employed high-tech gadgetry and techniques
led by Morgan last year might be relatively new. Or, she said, it could have
formed millennia ago.
"I don't know whether this thing is active now in terms of inflation or
not," Morgan said.
So what set off the panic in the it's-time-to-drill crowd? A few combinations
of coincidence and research.
First, state-of-the-art mapping revealed some features of Yellowstone
that were previously unknown. Next were more obvious changes to the Norris
geyser basin were taking place. Combined with what scientists see as sensational
press coverage, these triggered alarm in some circles.
Beginning in 2002, Morgan led a team that produced the first detailed
topographical maps of the bottom of Lake Yellowstone - a pristine basin fed
by 144 mountain streams and drained by the Yellowstone River.
Morgan deployed robotic submarines. She bounced sonar waves off the lakebed
and at frequencies that penetrated deeper into that bottom. She ordered magnetic
measurements of the rock. The result was a map that's precision befits the
digital age.
"It's like having the cataracts taken off of your eyes," she said.
The scientific view was delightful. Through roughly the middle of the
lake ran the edge of the Yellowstone caldera, that sunken supervolcano crater,
a tad straighter and more to the east than previously thought.
In a northwestern corner of the lake was a spire field, column after column
of towers ranging from just more than 3 feet to a little less than about
30 feet wide and sometimes more than two stories high.
Morgan said they were formed around hydrothermal vents, where sulfur-laced,
super-heated water jets into the lake. The sulfur attracts bacteria. The
bacteria become filled with silica and build layer upon layer - stalagmite-style
- over the eons.
Perhaps most dramatic was the discovery of the bulge, what Morgan labeled
an "inflated plain," to suggest it is evidence of pressure from below the
lake nudging at the earth's skin.
Roughly the size of a few city blocks, she said it was pocked with
hydrothermal vents that demonstrate it is close to the magma chamber below
and possibly under more pressure that other places in the caldera.
If it were to blow, it would not be the first the lake has seen. An explosion
at the northeast edge about 13,000 years ago left a three-mile-wide crater
at Mary Bay. The larger West Thumb of the lake was the result of another
blast.
While scientists were scanning the lake with sonar equipment in September
2003, one long-time Yellowstone researcher noticed an especially strong sulfur
scent rising from bubbles in the water. He'd spent years on the lake but
never noticed the smell to be so strong.
But the observation came at a time when it was unusual to be on the lake.
Researchers typically leave by summer's end. In the fall, the lake is nearing
its lowest levels, when there's less mountain runoff to dilute the sulfur-tainted
water from underground hydrothermal venting.
"Maybe it's been that way during that season every year for a long time,"
Morgan said. "We don't know."
Meantime, there was a shift this year in the baffling water table at the
Norris geyser basin about 20 miles away - leaving some former bubbling areas
dry and creating neon green pools elsewhere that can scald to death wayward
bison.
With at least one long-dormant geyser spitting to life near a trail, the
park was forced to shut off a large portion of the boardwalk that winds through
the steamy plateaus.
"Safety first," said Heasler, the park geologist. "The problem is, we
don't know what's causing this."
To children, Heasler compares the enigma of Yellowstone geology to the
seven volumes that are expected in the Harry Potter series.
"It's as if we're just into the first paragraph," he said. "There's an
awful lot we don't know yet."
He emphasizes that discoveries such as the spires and the bulge are newly
noticed, not necessarily new. So Heasler said they couldn't be taken as evidence
that there had been any radical developments at Yellowstone in recent
years.
The shift at the Norris geysers, he said, is the same sort of change that
has made the place remarkable since scientists started paying attention.
It would be more unusual if things stopped changing.
Still, Heasler said he received several anxious e-mails a week from people
worried about an eruption at Yellowstone that could kill millions.
Bob Smith, a geophysics professor at the University of Utah, has been
studying what he calls the living caldera" of Yellowstone for decades. He
noted that there have been no unusual seismic activities at the park this
year that might precede bigger trouble.
"These things don't go like clockwork," said Smith, author of Windows
into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National
Parks. "The hazard … is almost too small to calculate."
© 2003, The Kansas City Star.
Visit The Star Web edition on the World Wide Web at
http://www.kcstar.com
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2003 22:29:10 -0500
From: John <yzzykrazy@xxx>
Brother Living In Yellowstone Area Explains Situation To His Sister
October 6, 2003 Dear Sis:
Sis, I just haven't had time to send you the info on Yellowstone. But
here is the scoop. Yellowstone National Park is about to blow off the face
of the Earth, and our wonderful leaders are keeping the whole thing
squelched.
In July the Park rangers closed the entire Norris Geyser Basin because
of the deformation of the land and the excess temperature. There is an area
there that is 28 miles long by 7 miles wide that has bulged upward over five
inches since 1996, and this year the ground temperature on that bulge has
reached over 200 degrees. There was no choice but to close off the whole
area. Everything in that area is dying. The trees, flowers, grass, etc. A
dead zone is developing and spreading outward. The animals are literally
migrating out of the park. This isn't hearsay. It is coming from people who
have actually visited the park in just the last few weeks.
Then the last part of July one of the Park geologists discovered a huge
bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. The bulge has already risen over
100 feet from the bottom of the lake, and the water temperature at the surface
of the bulge has reached 88 degrees and is still rising. Keep in mind that
Yellowstone Lake is a high mountain lake with very cold water temperature.
The Lake is now closed to the public. It is filled with dead fish floating
everywhere. The same is true of the Yellowstone river and most of the other
streams in the Park. Dead and dying fish are filling the water everywhere.
Many of the picnic areas in the Park have been closed and people that
are visiting the Park don't stay but a few hours or a day or two and leave.
The stench of sulphur is so strong that they literally can't stand the
smell.
The irony of all this is that not one word of this is being brought to
public attention by the news media or by our government which is supposed
to be "protecting" us. But, believe it or not, just last week a British newspaper
broke the story about Yellowstone National Park being "a threat to the entire
world."
Sis, Yellowstone is what geologists call a "super volcano." There is a
massive caldera of molten fire beneath Yellowstone National Park. When this
thing blows, geologists are saying that every living thing within six hundred
miles is likely to die.
Yet our wonderful news media is not telling the public a thing about this.
They are keeping it suppressed so that it won't effect the "economy." To
hell with the lives of people, just protect the pocket books of the rich.
When this things explodes it will produce an ash cloud that will cover the
entire western U.S. clear to the Pacific on the west, British Columbia on
the north, the Mexican border on the south, and then out into the Dakotas,
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas on the east. And then the clould will
blow east because of the prevailing winds, literally covering the entire
nation with volcanic ash. And the American people are not even being told
that the explosion of this "super volcano" is imminent. There is no question
that this thing is going to explode momentarily. The movement of magma has
been detected just three-tenths of a mile below the bulging surface of the
ground in Yellowstone.
YELLOWSTONE WILL BLOW AGAIN - NO TELLING WHEN
Kansas City Star
October 7, 2003
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1007Yellowstone-ON.html
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - When European settlers wandered upon this
otherworld of gurgling mud pits and angry geysers, they described it as a
place where hell bubbled up.
They didn't guess, as geologists believe now, that three times in the
last 2 million or so years, hell blasted the earth's crust here with a fury
that can barely be imagined.
Most recently, some 640,000 years ago, Yellowstone's rage toppled
mountainsides, changed the course of rivers and sprayed ash ankle deep over
all of what is now the Western United States.
So there's understandable interest in whether it might blow again. And
when. Fresh high-technology studies of the underground cauldron -- and discovery
of a bulge on the floor of Yellowstone Lake -- show anew the region as
geology-in-the-making.
There's evidence that the bulge -- described by one scientist as an "inflated
plain" -- might be throbbing from the pressure that pushed it up in the first
place.
That detection has scientists captivated, not frightened, even as it fills
amateur geologists with dread.
Those laymen worry that the pressure cooker of Yellowstone is set to
burst.
Even smaller blasts -- say the size of Mount St. Helens -- that come about
every 20,000 years or so can rearrange Yellowstone's scenery. The most recent
of those was 70,000 years ago.
Some urge government engineers to gradually vent steam and magma by drilling,
rather than wait for a seemingly imminent, giant and calamitous blast.
"If nothing is done there will be an unimaginable disaster," went discussion
at one Internet discussion site. But nobody even seems to be thinking about
it."
But the geologists who explore the caldera -- the collapsed supervolcano
that is Yellowstone -- share neither such alarmist doom nor faith in methods
for taming the forces boiling underground.
For starters, drilling here would spoil the natural setting of the world's
first national park in 1872, said park geologist Hank Heasler.
What's more, he said, it would do no good. The magma chamber miles below
the park is mostly like a hardened sponge and is essentially self-sealing.
"Besides, it's too big," he said, noting the caldera measures 35 miles
by 45 miles. "We're on the skin of the apple. We can leave little bruises,
but we can't affect the flavor of the fruit."
Discovery of the bulge
Government and university scientists dismiss new-born worries about
Yellowstone, about the bulge beneath the lake, and about recent changes at
the park's Norris geyser basin. Mostly, they marvel at their out-sized
laboratory.
They point out that, literally, the landscape of Yellowstone is always
shifting. Last year, typical for the era when such measurements have been
made, there were about 2,300 earthquakes in the park.
"Geologists usually look at something that formed millions of years ago
and is now dead," said Lisa Morgan, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist. "But
in Yellowstone, it's something that's happening right now."
The bulge, discovered with newly employed high-tech gadgetry and techniques
led by Morgan last year, might be relatively new. Or, she said, it could
have formed millennia ago.
"I don't know whether this thing is active now in terms of inflation or
not," Morgan said.
So what set off the panic in the it's-time-to-drill crowd? A few combinations
of coincidence and research.
First, state-of-the-art mapping revealed some features of Yellowstone
that were previously unknown. Next were more obvious changes to the Norris
geyser basin were taking place. Combined with what scientists see as sensational
press coverage, these triggered alarm in some circles.
Beginning in 2002, Morgan led a team that produced the first detailed
topographical maps of the bottom of Lake Yellowstone -- a pristine basin
fed by 144 mountain streams and drained by the Yellowstone River.
Morgan deployed robotic submarines. She bounced sonar waves off the lake
bed and at frequencies that penetrated deeper into that bottom. She ordered
magnetic measurements of the rock. The result was a map whose precision befit
the digital age.
"It's like having the cataracts taken off of your eyes," she said.
The scientific view was delightful. Through roughly the middle of the
lake ran the edge of the Yellowstone caldera, that sunken supervolcano crater,
a tad straighter and more to the east than previously thought.
In a northwestern corner of the lake was a spire field, column after column
of towers ranging from just more than 3 feet to a little less than about
30 feet wide and sometimes more than two stories high.
Morgan said they were formed around hydrothermal vents, where sulfur-laced,
super-heated water jets into the lake. The sulfur attracts bacteria. The
bacteria become filled with silica and build layer upon layer -- stalagmite-style
-- over the eons.
Perhaps most dramatic was the discovery of the bulge, what Morgan labeled
an "inflated plain," to suggest it is evidence of pressure from below the
lake nudging at the earth's skin.
Roughly the size of a few city blocks, she said it was pocked with
hydrothermal vents that demonstrate it is close to the magma chamber below
and possibly under more pressure that other places in the caldera.
If it were to blow, it would not be the first the lake has seen. An explosion
at the northeast edge about 13,000 years ago left a three-mile-wide crater
at Mary Bay. The larger West Thumb of the lake was the result of another
blast.
Like Harry Potter
While scientists were scanning the lake with sonar equipment in September
2003, one long-time Yellowstone researcher noticed an especially strong sulfur
scent rising from bubbles in the water. He'd spent years on the lake but
never noticed the smell to be so strong.
But the observation came at a time when it was unusual to be on the lake.
Researchers typically leave by summer's end. In the fall, the lake is nearing
its lowest levels, when there's less mountain runoff to dilute the sulfur-tainted
water from underground hydrothermal venting.
"Maybe it's been that way during that season every year for a long time,"
Morgan said. "We don't know."
Meantime, there was a shift this year in the baffling water table at the
Norris geyser basin about 20 miles away -- leaving some former bubbling areas
dry and creating neon green pools elsewhere that can scald to death wayward
bison.
With at least one long-dormant geyser spitting to life near a trail, the
park was forced to shut off a large portion of the boardwalk that winds through
the steamy plateaus.
"Safety first," said Heasler, the park geologist. "The problem is, we
don't know what's causing this."
To children, he compares the enigma of Yellowstone geology to the seven
volumes that are expected in the Harry Potter series.
"It's as if we're just into the first paragraph," he said. "There's an
awful lot we don't know yet."
He emphasizes that discoveries such as the spires and the bulge are newly
noticed, not necessarily new. So Heasler said they couldn't be taken as evidence
that there had been any radical developments at Yellowstone in recent years.
The shift at the Norris geysers, he said, is the same sort of change that
has made the place remarkable since scientists started paying attention.
It would be more unusual if things stopped changing.
Still, Heasler said he received several anxious e-mails a week from people
worried about an eruption at Yellowstone that could kill millions.
Bob Smith, a geophysics professor at the University of Utah, has been
studying what he calls the living caldera" of Yellowstone for decades. He
noted that there have been no unusual seismic activities at the park this
year that might precede bigger trouble.
"These things don't go like clockwork," said Smith, author of Windows
into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National
Parks. "The hazard ... is almost too small to calculate."
In Yellowstone, a Subterranean Volcano Exerts its Influence
Jim Robbins for The New York Times
At the Norris Geyser Basin last summer, parts of unpaved trails were dissolved
by acidic groundwater.
By JIM ROBBINS
Published: October 7, 2003
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The rolling pine forests, snowcapped
mountains and crisp fall evenings here tend to make people forget the fact
that the park sits atop a huge simmering underground volcano. But new geologic
events have served up reminders.
In a few days in July, acidic ground water dissolved parts of the unpaved
trails in the Norris Geyser Basin, and the ground temperature of the trails
shot up to 200 degrees from the usual maximum of 80. Park officials closed
nearly half of the basin's trails, and they remain shut.
On Aug. 21, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake shook the southern boundary of
the park and startled residents. Yellowstone is one of the most seismically
active places on the planet, with hundreds of shakes and shimmers throughout
the year. They reach magnitude 4 usually only every other year.
In the park, such events are no great surprise. "Change is what we expect
in Yellowstone," said the park geologist, Hank Heasler.
Although there is no indication that any of the changes suggest an impending
eruption, even that would not be so surprising.
Over last 630,000 years, Yellowstone has experienced 29 eruptions the
size of the one on Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991. The average
interval here has been 20,000 years, and 70,000 have passed since its last
eruption.
But the volcano, with a caldera 45 by 28 miles, has the potential for
far more catastrophic explosions. The last major eruption, estimated at a
magnitude 1,000 times as great as the Mount St. Helens explosion of 1980,
was 627,000 years ago. The ancient blast blew up miles of mountain range,
and ash from it has been uncovered in 22 Western states. It was so thick
1,000 miles away in Kansas that it was mined in the 1930's and used to make
a cleanser.
Whether the caldera erupts or not, the stew of partly molten rock 5 to
10 miles below the park exerts a powerful and constant influence.
"The whole of the Yellowstone Plateau is going up and down from the magma,"
averaging one and a half centimeters a year, said Dr. Robert B. Smith, a
professor of geophysics at the University of Utah and a member of the Yellowstone
Volcano Observatory. "It's like a living, breathing thing."
In light of the new activity, safety is a growing concern, and officials
are writing a hazard plan in case the region grows more active. The ground
warming could mean that heat is increasing water pressure, a possible cause
of eruptions.
In 1989, Porkchop Geyser in Norris Basin became clogged with silica. It
exploded and created a 12-foot-wide crater now called Porkchop Hot Spring.
A hydrothermal explosion at Mary Bay in Yellowstone Lake some 13,000 years
ago blew out a crater more than three miles across.
Serious earthquakes are always a possibility. Even though the temblor
on Aug. 21 caused no damage, it was widely felt.
The largest quake recorded in the West, 7.5 on the old Richter scale,
was centered just outside the park in 1959. It dislodged a huge slice of
a mountain west of the park, buried 25 campers as they slept in a national
forest campground and dammed the Madison River to create Quake Lake.
One question that occupies geologists is how the caldera affects fault
lines and vice versa. Five major faults terminate in the molten caldera,
and even far-flung events can shake the earth here. In November 2002, a magnitude
7.9 quake in Denali National Park in Alaska rippled through the region, leading
to more than 500 other quakes that Dr. Smith watched simultaneously on a
computer in Utah.
"The whole of Yellowstone lit up like a Christmas tree," he said. "It
was exciting. I had a ranger call me and say, `I've called you before about
earthquakes, but these are coming at us from all directions.' "
Except for the quake two months ago, Yellowstone has had far fewer quakes
in recent years. "Seismically, its been deathly quiet," Dr. Smith said. "We
average a half-dozen to 20 quakes" a day. "The last two years, we see a couple
a day."
The energy of the quakes has been harnessed to shed light on the volcano.
A measuring method, seismic tomography, which is similar to C.T. scanning,
uses the shock waves that the quakes generate to map structures deep in the
earth. Figures from 12,000 quakes gave Dr. Smith a picture of the size and
shape of the magma chamber.
The magma also fuels geothermal features. All the geyser basins are similar,
in that they sit over porous channelized rock layers that contain water under
pressure. The water seeps toward the magma zone, where it is superheated.
As the water is forced back toward the surface, the pressure is relieved
and volume expands, causing geysers to erupt.
Even among the steaming, hissing and bubbling landscapes here, Norris
Basin stands out. Steamboat Geyser is the tallest one in the park, at 380
feet, more than twice as high as Old Faithful. Test drilling in 1929 measured
water temperatures 265 feet down at 400 degrees, and drilling equipment had
to be withdrawn.
"The geothermal features of Norris are equally amazing to scientists who
have been here for 30 years or someone on their first visit," said Mr. Heasler,
the geologist.
Each year, a disturbance at Norris alters features and muddies the water.
This year, the disturbance, on July 11, was more severe than usual. Because
the "plumbing" is underground, the more precise mechanics of geyser basins
are not well understood, and why Norris Basin has changed so markedly and
suddenly is guesswork.
"The most common hypothesis is that snowmelt wanes and the water table
lowers and weight on the system decreases and, as a result, the water boils
more aggressively," said Dr. Jake Lowenstern, a geologist at the United States
Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., who is in charge of the Yellowstone
Volcano Observatory.
Many features took longer than usual to return to base line, although
some have not returned. Echinus Geyser once erupted frequently, every 35
to 75 minutes. In 1998 it switched to an irregular pattern. It had been erupting
every two to nine hours before this season's disturbance, which somehow made
it blow on a schedule again, every 3 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours 40 minutes.
The geyser has now reverted to irregularity.
Pearl Geyser, an erupting pool named for its opalescent blue color, usually
has two-meter eruptions. After the disturbance, it changed color to crystal
clear, then became a steam vent and later returned to an opalescent pool
with one-meter eruptions.
At the northern end of the basin, a series of vents, or fumaroles, appeared
and mud pots cropped up on the trail, splattering hot acidic mud, though
it later disappeared.
"Norris," Mr. Heasler said, "is showing us something, and whether we can
figure it out, we'll see."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
At 07:17 PM 10/1/2003,
--- grimalkin_q <grimalkin_q@yahoo.com> wrote:
To: apfn-1@yahoogroups.com
From: "grimalkin_q" <grimalkin_q@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 17:33:23 -0000
Subject: [apfn-1] OT: Yellowstone just made FoxNews(radio) - Boiling
ground
For anyone interested in the situation at Yellowstone, a friend just
called and told me that on the hourly FoxNEWS on a local RADIO station that
they stated that many trails have recently been cordoned off, due to **BOILING**
ground....
And that, for the *first* time in approximately 30 years, the Boiling
Geyser at Yellowstone erupted TWICE today.
At Yellowstone there are no dramatic changes augering a big event. Only
tiny changes which are typical of any active but relatively inert volcanic
field. BUT Yellowstone should be intensively wired, monitored and studied.
A big event could easily start up after a three to six month acceleration
process in local changes.
The radio was on about Yellowstone blowing:
9-17-03
- DREAM - I was in the backyard of my house. Some men came and were moving a lot
of dirt around and covering up the evidence that the ground was heating up. They
pulled in piles of burned off and still smoking trees which were still hot
inside. I was standing on them with myh bare feet and could feel the heat in
them. After they finished the trees movement then they covered it up with
blankets so nobody would see it.
We had to leave the
area and evacuate without letting anyone know we were doing so. I hid a file
about some people that investigators were looking for.
I
hid them in drawers that were easy to find, but not where they might look.
Then
I put on a heavy fur coat to protect myself with.
My
ex-husband Ed showed up, and I was hoping he would leave a gain and then we were
told that he was staying because he was hired to do a radio show on
Saturdays.
NOTE: Art Bell is returning to radio on
Saturdays.
HISTORY
OF FIRES AT YELLOWSTONE
Monday, September 15, 2003
Thermal activity in Yellowstone sparks increased monitoring
Special to WHT
Norris Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park has long been recognized
as the hottest and most changeable of Yellowstone's famous hydrothermal wonders.
This summer, Norris lived up to its hot, unstable reputation as scientists
and visitors alike have seen significant changes in many geysers and increased
ground temperatures in the western part of the basin. Porkchop Geyser, which
sprang to life from a small hot spring in 1971, erupted in July for the first
time since 1989.
Water has drained away from several active geysers, resulting in hissing
steam vents and ground temperatures as high as 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Still other geysers have erupted more frequently and regularly, while
some thermal features that usually release hot water and steam now send steam
jetting into the air.
On July 11, the staff of Yellowstone National Park also noted the formation
of a new mud pot - a small cauldron filled with boiling acidic water and
mud. Within one week, the mudpot turned into a high - pressure steam vent.
Also, pine trees are dying in three areas in response to the increased
thermal activity. Norris is one of the more popular geyser basins in Yellowstone,
with as many as 4,000 people visiting the nearby museum each week.
On July 23, the park superintendent closed access to the western part
of Norris Geyser Basin, known as the Back Basin, for public safety (other
parts of Norris remain open to the public).
About a mile of trail and boardwalk in the Back Basin remain closed because
of the hazard to visitors and park staff from the high temperatures.
Another potential hazard is from hydrothermal explosions that could send
boiling water andd rocks shooting into the air.
The concern for public safety is real. Hydrothermal explosions have occurred
recently at Norris and other areas of Yellowstone.
For example, Porkchop Geyser exploded on September 5, 1989. Rocks surrounding
the old geyser were upended by the force of the explosion, and some rocks
were thrown more than 216 feet from the spouting geyser.
Luckily, people in the area were not injured by the flying debris and
scalding water.
The cause of the increased thermal activity is not known, but scientists
associated with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) launched a temporary
monitoring experiment in August in order to learn from the ongoing activity.
YVO is a collaborative partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey,
the University of Utah, and Yellowstone National Park.
The Norris monitoring experiment is also supported by two research
organizations - the Integrated Research Institutes in Seismology (IRIS) and
University NAVSTAR Consortium (NAVCO).
Scientists installed a network of seven new seismic stations for recording
various types of earthquakes. The instruments, called broadband seismometers,
record a wide range of vibrations typical of hydrothermal and volcanic systems.
These seismometers are especially sensitive to the long - wavelength ground
vibrations that occur as water and gas move through underground cracks.
Five high - precision Global Positioning System receivers also were installed
at Norris in order to track movement of the ground in response to underground
pulses of groundwater and steam and, in case one occurs, a hydrothermal
explosion.
Data from the broadband and GPS receivers are being stored on site. The
instruments and data will be retrieved in the next few weeks before the onset
of winter.
Thermometers were also placed in hot springs and downstream from geysers
and other thermal features to continuously measure temperature fluctuations
that may occur.
The Norris experiment is intended to document activity within the shallow
hydrothermal system that may be causing changes at the surface of the Back
Basin.
In the coming months, scientists will be pouring over the mounds of data
collected by the Norris experiment for possible clues to the renewed heating
of Norris.
There is no evidence, however, that magma beneath the enormous Yellowstone
caldera is directly involved.
Scientists have noted similar changes at Norris in the past, but the current
activity is perhaps the best opportunity yet to quantitatively document and
better understand hydrothermal disturbances and their possible causes at
Yellowstone.
This article was written by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey's
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
"Mt. Sheriden has been rumbling (15+ micro-quakes) between 1:00 pm and
now (9/7/03). There were three small earthquakes at Yellowstone lake between
10:00 am and 1:00 pm MT (9/7/03), which were felt at Norris Junction.
There were some small quakes between Midnight and 6:00 am (9/7/03) at
Norris Junction. There was a whole string of micro-quakes (25 or more) at
Madison River between 6:00 am and now, which are continuing. There
have been sporadic micro-quakes (32+) all day at Mammoth Hot Springs.
Micro-quakes started around Noon and have continued to the present at Mirror
Lake Plateau. All in all, activity is picking up from a lull for about two
weeks, before which a series of small and large quakes (including a 4.4)
occurred. That quake prompted the web report.
Steam pressure is apparently building again, and hydrothermal fluids and
steam are working their way up through fractures and vents. I do not expect
anything unusual or extreme to happen in the immediate future, but if the
trend continues, and the number of earthquakes gradually increase with time,
more warnings from geologists will ensue.
What you should be alert to is any report that mentions increasing geyser
activity, with new fumaroles and steam vents appearing near or on top of
the rising dome. The dome has risen about three feet in the past few years,
and magma has risen to within 3.7 km of the surface based on quake data.
Earthquake loci measured to within 0.5 km under Mt. St. Helens, and people
still didn't think it would erupt.
But everything has to be scaled up for Yellowstone, meaning that 3.7 km
is not a safe depth. Ground temperatures in the northwestern part of the
park are apparently on the rise (up to 200 dg F in some places), killing
the vegetation. Large areas of the park are now closed, including areas with
geysers, because their water temperature is now scalding and dangerous for
visitors.
If more steam vents appear, that means a continuous pathway for pressure
release has been established to the magma chamber. If that happens, the pressure
in the magma chamber will continue to drop until it reaches a critical stage
when the superheated water within the magma explodes. When that happens the
super-volcano will blow violently, blowing out a chunk of its cap-rock and
sending millions of cubic feet of ash into the atmosphere in a Pompeii-like
explosion, but 100,000 times worse.
When you hear those reports, you will have about two days to “get
out of Dodge” before the eruption. Unfortunately, as the steam venting
subsides, there will be a false sense of security. People will think
it was just another cyclical event, and the danger is over. But that will
be the farthest from the truth. It will be the quiet before the storm. A
major earthquake will suddenly rock their towns for hundreds of kilometers
around Yellowstone, and soon thereafter 1,000+ degree pyroclastic flows will
descend on them at hundreds of miles per hour, extending out to 600+
km.
That 600 km radius around the caldera will experience total devastation.
The next 600 km out may receive as much as 5-10 feet of ash, depending on
wind direction. The thickness of ash will decrease away from the super-volcano,
but will reach the crop belt in the Midwest (Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska,
etc.), destroying most of the fertile croplands of the United States. California
will be hit hard by falling ash, with its central wine valley severely damaged
(the French will love it). Agriculture will have to shift east of the Mississippi
for years. The Garden State will once again live up to its name.
In northern Idaho you will have to contend with several feet of ash and
isolation. Roads will be closed. Power will be out. Phones will be out.
Communication will depend on Ham radios and local stations that have
generators. Rescue will take weeks or months. Some areas will never see rescue
teams. The survivalists will be best prepared to make it through the difficult
months following the eruption. Make new friends. Have plenty of dust masks
on hand, because you cannot breath any airborne ash if you want to avoid
lung disease. It's what caused mass kills of plains animals 12 million years
ago, resulting in extensive bone beds beneath the ash. Drinkable water will
sell at the price of gold.
To recap, I don't expect anything to happen in the near future. But with
such an unpredictable event, being prepared is your best ticket to
survival."
(Dr. Bruce Cornet)
9-5-03
Cost of Losing Yellowstone
Although it's a long shot to happen in the next few days, over a longer
period of time, there's a good chance that Yellowstone will blow its top
and the simmering caldera will let rip with Mt. St. Helen's (or greater)
magnitude. I've been watching this sort of out of the corner of one eye because
if or when the Yellowstone Park area goes in any kind of massive eruption,
the impacts on food supplies worldwide will be horrible. The plume area from
Yellowstone covers a good-sized chunk of the Midwest.
Reader reports and items which we have picked up off news groups are
sounding pretty scary. Areas are being closed off, there are reports of dead
animals and even fish are reported dying off in large numbers. Against this
background, the USGS says there is an increase in government monitoring,
such as a recent news release that says in part:
"In response to notably increased heat and steam emissions in parts of
Norris Geyser Basin, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory will deploy a temporary
network of seismographs, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, and
temperature loggers. The temporary deployment is intended to document chemical
and physical signals that accompany this increased activity, to identify
the underground locations of hydrothermal steam sources and the relationship
of the Norris geyser basin to the background general seismicity, and crustal
deformation of the Yellowstone caldera. It may also detect any precursory
signals to geyser eruptions and hydrothermal explosions.
A reader sends in this interesting compilation, which augments other
reports we have had:
"fish are floating dead in the streams, and the lake is closed. A very
strong smell of H2SO4 (sulfur) People were leaving due to smell --- He also
mentioned that the Seismo sites had been shut down" and "there is a large
dead zone of animals and vegetation. Immediately outside this dead zone,
vegetation has stopped growing and animals are migrating out of the area.
New geysers and mud pots are springing up daily. You can physically see the
ground bulging up, not only at Yellowstone Lake, but in several places in
the park" enclosed are 2 brief reports on this matter.
If this is true it will be interesting to see your report on Mars, the
sun, and coronal mass ejection. Would love to see if you can confirm these
reports. A daily reader and fan for 3 years. Love your work!!
1. First report
Yellowstone is worse than we thought --The husband of my daughter´s
social studies teacher is staying at the Crow Reservation in Montana, 100
miles from Yellowstone. He said that over and above everything we have heard
to date (which he says is absolutely true), there is a large dead zone of
animals and vegetation. Immediately outside this dead zone, vegetation has
stopped growing and animals are migrating out of the area. New geysers and
mud pots are springing up daily. You can physically see the ground bulging
up, not only at Yellowstone Lake, but in several places in the park. They
have closed more areas to the public than is being reported. There are several
areas where the ground temperature tops 200 degrees. And earthquakes are
becoming a daily occurrence.
2. Second report
Anonymous warning from visitor to yellowstone
Tue Sep 2 2003 3:10:31 pm
Phenomena
From: Scorpio,
Subject: Yellowstone-Problems?
Hello folks, next door neighbor just got back from a weeks stay in
Yellowstone. we talked and I was told a lot more camping areas have been
closed off besides around the Lake. he is an avid fisherman, said the fish
are ffloating dead in the streams, and the lake is closed. A very strong
smell of H2SO4 (sulfur) People were leaving due to smell --- He also mentioned
that the Seismo sites had been shut down!??????
Did some homework on Utah and Montana sites YEP---- looks like things
are not being updated after Aug 29-30-----Can anyone confirm?? Anyone out
there near Yellowstone that might be able to fill us in?
Your Thoughts Folks???? Scorpio
Well, you might want to bookmark the Yellowstone recent quakes map at
http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/index.html
so you won't have to search for it if the area pops off shortly.
The other thing to consider is how the economy of Wyoming and the surrounding
states will do should the area become explosively active. Yellowstone tourism
and trade contributes directly about 15% of Wyoming economic activity. A
series of major quakes, explosions, and volcanic activity could put this
event in the class of a "supervolcano". As one post I found put it:
"When Yellowstone goes off again, and it will, it will be a disaster
for the United States and eventually, for the whole world. We volcanologists
believe it would all begin with the magma chamber becoming unstable. Observations
would begin by seeing bigger earthquakes, greater uplifting as magma intrudes
and gets nearer and nearer the surface. An earthquake may send a rupture
through a brittle layer similar to breaking the lid off a pressure cooker.
This would generate sheets of magma, which will perhaps rise up to 30, 40
or 50 kilometers sending gigantic amounts of debris into the atmosphere.
Pyroclastic flows would cover the whole region, killing tens of thousands
of people in the surrounding area.
The ash carried in the atmosphere and deposited over vast areas of the
United States would have devastating effects. A plume of material that goes
up into the atmosphere, globally, from the eruption would produce the climatic
effects. This would spread worldwide and have a cooling effect that would
most likely destroy the growing season on a global scale.
As Dr. Ted Nield, of the Geological Society of London, stated once,
“When a supervolcano goes off, it is an order of magnitude greater than
a normal eruption. It produces energy equivalent to an impact with a comet
or an asteroid.” “You can try diverting an asteroid, but there
is nothing at all you can do about a supervolcano.”
The eruption will throw out cubic kilometers of rock, ash, dust, sulfur
dioxide and so on into the upper atmosphere, where it will reflect incoming
solar radiation, forcing down temperatures on the earth’s surface. It
would be the equivalent of a nuclear winter. The effects would last for four
or five years with crops failing and the whole ecosystem breaking down."
http://messagequotes.8m.net/Two%20geological%20time%20bombs.doc
Since there is about nothing you can do about the possibility of a
supervolcano, this is really more a mind-stretch for a Friday morning. Will
the caldera at Yellowstone become a massive volcano capable of causing the
entire planet to drop into a nuclear winter-like cooling? Yes, no doubt.
But it's all a matter of timing. Right now, there's nothing saying that the
dead fish, the dead coyote reported from another source, or any number of
other events are anything but minor cyclical blips. Still, it's worth keeping
an eye on the situation because if it goes, there's the end of the stock
markets around the world. One thing is obvious, the markets aren't discounting
anything for such an event, and it will likely take serious pre-eruption
activities such as closing the entire park and moving people out of the plume
area before the markets will react. Even then it will likely be initially
only a small move.
FROM:
http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm
East entrance to Yellowstone reopened round-the-clock
Associated Press
CHEYENNE — Yellowstone National Park’s east entrance was reopened
round-the-clock Tuesday even though continued dry weather raised the possibility
that a pair of wildfires could resume spreading.
The road was initially reopened from 6-9 a.m. and 6-9 p.m. each day. On
Sunday and Monday the road was reopened from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Although nighttime traffic has been allowed to resume, park officials
still urged motorists slow down and not stop along the 16 miles inside the
area of the East and Grizzly fires, which combined cover 23,500 acres.
The fires were 85 percent contained. But while firefighters were mopping
up some parts of the fires — such as by digging up and snuffing out
smoldering roots — other parts of the fires were more active.
Firefighters were concerned that continued dry, warm weather could cause
the fires to resume spreading after a week of holding at the same size. The
forecast called for afternoon winds around 10 mph and high temperatures in
the 70s.
"Whereas the activity is down somewhat, and the Type II team did an excellent
job containing them, they’re still not out," fire information officer
Brian Suderman said.
Helicopter bucket drops continued for especially hot spots.
In northwest Yellowstone, drivers along U.S. 191 north of West Yellowstone,
Mont., were also being told to slow down and watch out for firefighters in
the area of the 3,010-acre Rathbone fire.
Cinders blew across the highway Monday but on Tuesday there were no plans
to partially close the road, as happened last week. Park officials said vehicle
escorts would return to the area if the fire flares up.
Park officials were meanwhile keeping an eye on the remote 800-acre Union
fire near Union Falls in southwest Yellowstone. The Union Falls Trail has
been closed.
No new fires had broken out in Yellowstone in recent days. Of the 74 fires
reported in Yellowstone this year, 67 were caused by lightning and the other
seven were human-caused.
In Shoshone National Forest about 35 miles east of Yellowstone, the
11,553-acre Boulder Basin II fire remained 65 percent contained. Just 32
firefighters and one helicopter remained on scene.
The Blackwater Complex about 30 miles west of Cody was still 85 percent
contained. It has burned 6,805 acres.
Copyright © 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Yellowstone's other hibernating danger
Geologists have long known that the 10,000 hot springs and geysers in
Yellowstone National Park are evidence of magma, hot molten rock below the
surface. And they know that long ago the region experienced colossal eruptions
on a scale never seen in recorded history.
But an important question has evolved in recent years: Is Yellowstone
dying or just hibernating?
In the July 2001 issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters,
University of Wisconsin geologists Ilya Bindeman and John Valley report new
evidence indicating "a high probability of a future catastrophic eruption
sometime within the next million years, and possibly within the next hundred
thousand years."
Analyzing minerals that serve as time capsules of past catastrophes, Bindeman
and Valley have found support for other studies suggesting Yellowstone goes
nuts every few hundred thousand years. They also propose a reason why: An
epic hot spot.
Hot magma welling up from below acts like a burner, the researchers say,
melting surface rock and forming giant chambers of lava that build up over
long periods. Eventually, the chambers burst and release their fury.
Yellowstone's volcanism is dying, these researchers say, but it has at
least one last gasp in store.
The new geologic evidence adds to satellite data showing that the treasured
park straddling Idaho, Montana and Wyoming is destined to obliterate its
own beauty. Not to mention that of a few surrounding states.
Yellowstone from space
Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey uses a relatively new satellite
technique called satellite radar interferometry to watch the ground rise,
fall and morph around volcanoes and other volcanically active areas. While
the Global Positioning System can also show ground movement, it does so only
for locations where a monitor is in place on the ground.
But with radar interferometry, geologists map the topography of an entire
region, then watch it change over time.
In 1997, Wicks and his colleagues used the technique to document uplifts
at Yellowstone, which means the lava below was pushing its way to the surface.
"Yellowstone is alive and very active," Wicks said.
But no one can say if or when it might become dangerously active. If a
volcano is like a hibernating bear, however, then it may well be volcanic
springtime in Yellowstone.
"Super explosions, about 1,000 times more material erupted than Mt. St.
Helens in 1980, happen about every 600,000 years at Yellowstone," Wicks says.
"And it's been about 620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption
there."
August 21, 2003
Mild Earthquake Felt in Yellowstone Park
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)--A mild earthquake was reported near Yellowstone National
Park on Thursday, the University of Utah Seismograph Stations said.
The magnitude 4.4 earthquake, was felt at the park's south entrance and
at Grant Village, a tourist service area. No injuries or damage was reported
or expected, seismologist Jim Pechmann said.
The epicenter at 1:46 a.m. was Huckleberry Mountain, Wyo., eight miles
southeast of the south entrance to the park.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rare earthquake hits Wyoming
DENVER, Aug. 21, 2003 (UPI) -- An "uncommon" earthquake has shaken Wyoming,
the World Data Center for Seismology reported Thursday.
The event began just before 2 a.m. local time, and registered 4.4 on the
open-ended Richter scale, the Denver-based center said in a news release.
The epicenter was 30 miles southeast of Yellowstone Park in Montana, home
of the Old Faithful geyser.
Large, damaging earthquakes in the region are uncommon but significant
historical earthquakes have caused damage. The largest earthquake in the
southern and middle Rocky Mountains occurred on Nov. 8, 1882, the center
said.
There were no immediate reports of damage.
Also today:
Pakistan -- 6.7
Southern India -- 6.2
Southern Iran -- 5.9
New Zealand -- 6.8
Zaire -- 6.2
http://www.emsc-csem.org/
Yellowstone thermal activity increases
Saturday, August 09, 2003
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK (AP) -- Scientists plan to set up a temporary
network of seismographs, Global Positioning System receivers and thermometers
to monitor increasing hydrothermal activity in the Norris Geyser Basin and
gauge the risk of a hydrothermal explosion.
The goal of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is to pinpoint underground
sources of hydrothermal steam and learn more about how seismic activity affects
the basin.
A caldera that last erupted 70,000 years ago is in the center of Yellowstone.
Scientists do not expect a volcanic eruption.
However, small hydrothermal explosions occur in the park almost every
year. Usually they are not noticed until after the fact.
A hydrothermal explosion occurs when the pressure on hot groundwater is
released suddenly. The water comes to a boil and expands, fracturing rocks
and throwing them into the air. The resulting craters can be anywhere from
a few feet to thousands of feet across.
The GPS equipment being set up can measure very small movements of the
earth and the seismic array can measure earthquakes associated with flow
of thermal water and those associated with geologic faults.
Seven seismometers that can record a wide range of seismic frequencies
will be placed around the basin.
The Norris Back Basin has been closed since July 23 due to the formation
of new mud pots, changes in geyser activity and much higher ground temperatures
-- as hot as 200 degrees in some areas.
Vegetation has been dying due to thermal activity and altered eruption
intervals for several geysers. Increased steam discharge has been continuing,
according to park officials.
Hydrothermal activity has been increasing each year in the basin, but
the increase in recent weeks has been especially rapid.
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is a partnership of the U.S. Geological
Survey, the University of Utah and the park.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists studying the bottom of Yellowstone Lake,
meanwhile, have expressed concern about a 100-foot-high bulge in the bottom
of the lake that may have been formed recently.
The scientists speculate the bulge could have been formed by carbon dioxide
or steam and that it could explode.
August 8, 2003
Norris geysers prompt closure
Part of Norris Geyser Basin is getting too hot to handle, according to
a Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis who decided Wednesday
to close the area.
High ground temperatures and increased steam eruptions led Lewis to close
the western part of Back Basin trail at Norris to tourists and most park
employees. Park staff have measured ground temperatures of up to 200 degrees
Fahrenheit and recorded changing geyser activity.
Vixen Geyser has been erupting more frequently, and Echinus Geyser has
been erupting at more regular intervals. Even Porkchop Geyser, dormant since
it exploded in 1989, is steaming again.
“These are active areas,” said park spokeswoman Cheryl Matthews.
“It’s part of the fascination, and part of what people find so
wonderful about Yellowstone, is the thermal areas and the uniqueness. It’s
never stagnant.”
Norris Geyser Basin, which sits 22 miles south of Mammoth Hot Springs,
is Yellowstone’s hottest and most seismically active geyser basin. While
the changes are part of Yellowstone’s natural dynamics, Lewis closed
part of the basin to protect park staff and visitors from hot ground temperatures
and too much steam.
At West Yellowstone Visitor Center, 28 miles southwest of Norris, Marysue
Costello said visitor center staff had heard stories of new thermal activity
before the closure was announced. On Wednesday, she and other staff explained
the closure to tourists, who showed little reaction.
“I wouldn’t say that anybody has said, ‘Oooh, better not
go there,’” she said.
In fact, many tourists are surprised to learn that Yellowstone has so
many active geysers besides Old Faithful, she said. The closure is a good
way to teach visitors about Yellowstone’s geothermal activity, she said,
stressing that “this is a living, breathing area, and it
changes.”
The closure affects only a tiny portion of the park, Matthews said. It
encompasses 5,800 feet of 12,500 feet of trails in the geyser basin. The
popular Steamboat and Echinus geysers and all of Porcelain Basin remain open.
Norris is a popular draw, attracting thousands of visitors weekly.
Park officials decided to close the Back Basin trail after detecting increased
activity, beginning July 11. Several geyser pools drained, creating steam
vents, an indication the basin was heating up, park officials said. Also,
park staff measured ground temperatures of 200 degrees Fahrenheit –
an unacceptably high level for visitor and employee safety, park officials
said.
On July 16, park staff discovered a new mud pot and other thermal features
forming in the Back Basin. That same day, Porkchop Geyser erupted for the
first time 24 years. Porkchop Geyser regularly let off steam from 1985 until
it exploded in ’89 and went dormant.
Park staff also have observed dying vegetation due to shifting thermal
activity. Staff are monitoring the area daily, Matthews said. When ground
temperatures and thermal activity return to acceptable levels, she said park
officials would reopen the trail.
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory reported small earthquakes in the
area on July 18 and 21. The second was only 3 miles northeast of Norris.
In July and August of 2000, a swarm of small quakes generated interest because
it coincided with significant changes in hydrothermal activity at Norris.
Park staff and other scientists have no evidence of volcanic activity
at the basin, she said. But in any geothermal area, the possibility of steam
eruptions always exists, park officials stress.
So far, park officials have no indication of increased thermal activity
in other areas of the park. Park staff monitor daily a network of seismic
instruments in the park to detect changes.
The recent closures of the Gibbon, Madison and Firehole rivers are not
related to the thermal activity at Norris. Lewis closed the rivers because
of rising temperatures, which are affected primarily by air temperature and
water level – not geothermal activity, park officials said.
Strange activity in Yellowstone
By Greg Lavine
The Salt Lake Tribune
Scientists are increasing geothermal monitoring efforts in Yellowstone
National Park in response to an unusual spike in activity that has closed
part of Norris Geyser Basin.
With ground temperatures in some spots reaching the boiling point of water,
212 degrees, visitors have been prohibited from hiking along a back basin
trail. There is no danger to visitors in other sections of the park.
"It's not an emergency," said University of Utah geophysicist Robert Smith,
a coordinating scientist with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. "It's
kind of a scientific urgency."
Researchers from the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, including Smith,
are in Norris Geyser Basin this week setting up temporary monitoring equipment.
Among the tools being deployed are seven broadband seismometers and five
GPS sensors, said Jake Lowenstern, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher who
is the observatory's director.
Broadband seismometers, capable of picking up tiny ground movements, will
be used to detail the water moving just below the surface, he said. GPS monitors
will record side-to-side and up-and-down ground movements.
In July, the National Park Service closed 5,800 feet of trail crossing
geothermally active areas in the back basin, on the park's west side. The
increased activity prompted Porkchop geyser to erupt for the first time since
1989.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yogi be warned: Explosion may rock Yellowstone
01/08/2003 - 16:18:55
Scientists fear a giant explosion could rock Yellowstone National Park,
one of the USA’s top tourist destinations which inspired the setting
for the Yogi Bear cartoons.
A 2,100-foot bulge in the lake at the centre of Wyoming beauty spot looks
likely to boil over, spewing poisoned gasses and rocks around the area and
causing massive waves of hot water.
“We’re thinking this structure could be a precursor to an
hydrothermal explosive event,” Dr Lisa Morgan from the US Geological
Survey told Cody Enterprise, a newspaper in the state.
Sonar readings indicate the bulge is not a volcano but is caused by carbon
dioxide gas or steam.
Dr Morgan and her team of researchers are preparing a danger assessment
study to indicate how likely the plain is to explode.
If it does blow, it could leave a crater thousands of feet in diameter,
send pieces of the lake floor flying into the air and discharge “chemicals
containing toxic materials”, she said.
But Dr Morgan said there was still a possibility that the dome shaped
bulge could “freeze in time” and become dormant.
Yellowstone Park is the flagship of America’s National Park Service,
and visited by millions of people each year.
Yogi, the easy going grizzly bear who spent his time stealing picnic baskets
and outwitting Ranger Smith, was set in Jellystone National Park, loosely
based on Yellowstone.
Lowenstern said scientists hope their temporary equipment is able to capture
information about the geyser, should it become even more active for brief
periods.
The area under study is a 600-by-200-foot rectangle in the back basin.
New steam vents and mud pots have formed in recent weeks because of the
geothermal activity increase.
Norris Geyser Basin experiences increased geothermal activity every summer,
though this year has seen a larger than normal jump, he said.
glavine@sltrib.com
The Red Canyon Fault hike will be every Thursday at 10 a.m. The one-mile
roundtrip hike is approximately one to one and one-half hours long. Hikers
will discover the fault that was a key factor in the 7.5 magnitude Hebgen
Lake Earthquake
Hydrothermal and tectonic activity in northern Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming
Samuel Y. Johnson, U.S. Geological Survey, MS 966, Box 25046, Denver Federal
Center, Denver, Colorado 80225, USA, et al. Pages 954–971.
Keywords: Yellowstone Lake, seismic reflection profiles, hydrothermal
processes, explosive eruptions, extension faults, earthquake hazards.
Seismic reflection data from northern Yellowstone Lake document the
distribution, size, geometry, and relative age of geothermal features, including
the world's largest known hydrothermal explosion craters, asymmetric crater
ejecta, and vents and domes of variable size and concentration. Recognition
of submerged shoreline terraces completes a postglacial record of "heavy
breathing" of the Yellowstone caldera, an essential context for understanding
past and future caldera behavior. Documentation of the Lake Hotel fault zone
provides important information for local to regional earthquake hazard
assessment.
SOME COMMENTS
ALERT FOR THOSE LIVING WITHIN 600 MILES OF YELLOWSTONE
Much of Larry Parks research has appeared on this board and we have been
reading his reports but now a new earthquake has upped the ante...Below is
the link to the entire article. This is important that this be circulated
as we cannot be certain this will be covered by the mainstream media.
http://yowusa.com/Archive/Aug2003/volcanism4/volcanism4.htm
In this article, Larry Park will present the science behind his warning.
However, as the publisher of YOWUSA.COM, I wish to put some context to all
this in layman’s terms as now as I personally feel the time has come
for everyone living west of the Mississippi to become aware and to begin
making a calm and deliberate assessment of the facts. This especially applies
to those presently living within 600 miles of Yellowstone.
Thursday, January 01, 2004 Photos and articles ©2003 the Bozeman
Daily Chronicle
Yellowstone a hotspot of contention
By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer
The Internet news about Yellowstone National Park's volcano sure didn't
look cheery.
In fact, it was ghastly.
"We are overdue for annihilation," claimed one Web site.
"There is no question that this thing is going to explode momentarily,"
asserted another.
And it went on from there over the past couple of months in chat rooms
and e-mail messages.
One widely posted e-mail claimed the park contained a "dead zone" that
was spreading outward, killing everything. Yellowstone Lake was "filled with
dead fish floating everywhere."
Plus, there was a conspiracy afoot.
"Our wonderful news media is not telling the public a thing about this,"
the anonymous, but widespread, message maintained.
It cited as a source the Kansas City Star, which the author of the e-mail
presumably saw as a nonparticipant in the conspiracy of silence.
Like many others from around the nation, a Star reporter had written about
the Yellowstone volcano -- a topic that isn't new to most people living in
or near the park -- but he had made no calamitous predictions in the Oct.
7 article.
In fact, the story downplayed any concerns of imminent catastrophe.
"A good solid newspaper article got falsified on the Internet," said Hank
Heasler, the park's geologist. "It's interesting how the anarchy of the Web
contributes to misinformation."
Some people didn't see it that way. Apparently believing anonymous e-mail
instead of the newspaper, they denounced the Star, "angry that we hadn't
done more about the 'Yellowstone catastrophe,'" wrote Yvette Walker, the
paper's readers' representative. Others e-mailed the reporter, telling him
he was "either helping the government whitewash the Yellowstone story, or
that he's an unwitting dupe."
Yellowstone was designated as a national park in 1872 because of its unique
and fascinating geology. It contains the world's largest set of thermal features:
fumaroles and mudpots and geysers that are heated by a "hotspot" of magma
under the park's surface.
That hotspot also constitutes the base of one of the world's largest
volcanoes, though it's largely invisible and hasn't erupted for 70,000
years.
Three times in the past 2.1 million years, the park has blown its top,
covering much of the country in deep layers of volcanic ash and wreaking
havoc with global weather systems. The last big eruption was 640,000 years
ago, and there have been 30 smaller ones since then. The most recent was
70,000 years ago.
Things are still moving around, though.
"Yellowstone is one of the world's largest active volcanoes," Heasler
said.
All this has been well known for decades.
Yet for a considerable period this fall, alarmed people called the park,
worried about a mega-explosion.
"The phones did ring off the hook" for a while in early October, said
Stacy Valle, a park spokeswoman.
But why all the renewed interest, all the heightened fears?
Part of it stems from new research last summer that detailed a "bulge"
on the floor of Lake Yellowstone. It's probably related to thermal activity,
Heasler said, but it isn't necessarily new.
Rather, new technology just defined it better.
Heasler compared the new underwater mapping to a person with poor eyesight
finally putting on a pair of eyeglasses. For years, that person might have
admired the shapes of distant hills, but didn't see the trees on them until
purchasing spectacles.
That person's world got more interesting, but that doesn't mean the trees
weren't there before, Heasler observed.
The bulge discovery was outlined in newspapers and broadcasts around the
country. Then rumor mongers and apocalyptic types on the Internet got
involved.
"The volcano erupts with a near clockwork cycle of every 600,000 years,"
according to the Web site armageddononline.com, which notes the last big
eruption was 640,000 years ago.
That site also sells "books, videos and DVDs related to the end of the
world" and says it gets 90,000 hits a month.
Some of those people called the park.
"There's been a lot of energy and effort devoted to the concerns people
have about the park blowing up," said Heasler, who lives in Yellowstone and
hasn't packed any bags.
Another Web site connected the Yellowstone situation to a planetary link
with Mars.
When the National Park Service last summer closed part of the Norris Geyser
Basin, the most geologically active place in the park, it added to the
speculation. Soil temperatures there reached 200 degrees and a new thermal
feature opened up and started splashing acidic mud across a trail.
For obvious reasons, the area was closed to the public. It was reopened
when things cooled off.
It's all pretty interesting stuff, but not all that unusual at Norris.
"It occurs basically yearly," Heasler said.
The idea that Yellowstone is "overdue" for a giant eruption is a "gross
overstatement," according to the Web site of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory,
a project that combines the research talents of the federal government and
the University of Utah.
A more likely event, Heasler said, would be a magma flow, events which
happen all the time around the world.
If the big one does come, it will give warnings and modern instruments
likely will detect it, Heasler said.
The park's frequent, low-intensity earthquakes -- there were an average
of six a day in 2002 -- probably would become a lot more intense if a major
eruption was brewing, Heasler said.
The park likely would be evacuated, as would parkside communities, he
said, and the media is unlikely to let a story like that go untold.
"All that's good stuff for a novel, but isn't worth spending a lot of
time on now," Heasler added.
The park is a fascinating geology lab, showcasing changes that normally
take hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
"Here, it's on a daily basis," Heasler said. "The thermal features are
normal," but that means they're always rearranging themselves, sometimes
causing paths or areas to be closed for reasons of public safety.
"Is that unusual?" he asked. "Heck no. Just ask the boardwalk crew. But
we see no sort of indication of any sort of impending eruption."
Subj: RE: [1] Yellowstone
Date: 1/6/2004 3:31:06 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: foreverblue@xxx
good friend Bruce Cornet ... well actually good friend of my god mother
in NJ wrote this to her; he could be wrong ...
Dear P,
I just finished reading a web page of yours posted at a forum I like to
read. It was the one about Yellowstone. Living not to far from there I am
very interested in all reports on it. Very in-depth report .. I especially
liked it that you added pics to the page to show where the lava flows were
and such.
I have analyzed the Yellowstone historical and recent data, and am concerned
that the scale of the next eruption has been overestimated by people untrained
in geology by several orders of magnitudes. There is no imminent catastrophic
eruption at Yellowstone for a number of significant scientific reasons. If
an eruption does occur, it will undoubtedly be similar to what has occurred
off and on over the past few tens of thousands of years. The problem is that
the Yellowstone magma chamber can never erupt as a supervolcano again because
the size of the magma chamber and the pressures that can build up could never
reach that of prior eruptions millions of years ago in the supervolcano trend.
Do not mistaken my words. The next eruption may occur within several thousand
years, but it will not be much bigger than Mt. St. Helens in size.
There is no flammable rock. That is pure ignorance and misinformation.
Pyroclastic rock exists due to volatile volcanic gases, but that rock will
glow as if on fire only because it is near molten when it is thrown out of
the magma chamber. Sulfur will burn, but SO2, CO2, and H2O will not. Most
volcanic gases are made up of nonflammable materials. Silicate rock does
not burn.
The size of the last three major Yellowstone eruptions was much less
than previous eruptions further to the southwest, and each has been decreasing
in size and increasing in frequency. As the amount of time between eruptions
has decreased, so too has the time available for a magma chamber to grow.
Because the last three major eruptions have occurred under the same area,
the caprock to the magma chamber is highly fractured. In other words, the
gas pressure in the magma chamber is able to leak out to the surface, and
is visible at the surface in the form of fumaroles, mudpots, hotsprings,
and geysers. Those surficial expressions of underground pressure are also
the reason why extreme pressure (as develops just prior to a supervolcanic
eruption) cannot develop again at Yellowstone. Small local eruptions can
and do occur. On a geologic time scale, it appears that the deep mantle hotspot
is dying.
See
http://bcornet.homestead.com/files/Yellowstone/Periodicity.htm
The only flammable material that exists relative to a Yellowstone volcanic
eruption is present in super-hyped reports based on fear that increasing
evidence of underground pressure and temperature rise means the worst will
happen. There would be little or no prior indication for a supervolcanic
eruption, because magma pressures would be contained right up to the breaking
point. Yellowstone is a leaky volcanic system, and it goes through periodic
cycles of activity.
See
http://www.geocities.com/bcornet2001/Yellowstone/Yellowtrend.htm
Yours truly,
Bruce Cornet, Ph.D.
Prof. Geology and Botany
Raritan Valley Community College
Somerville, NJ 08876
From: dee777@aol.com [mailto:dee777@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 6 January 2004 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: [1] Yellowstone
Hi: I had some firsthand information from an ET about the possibility
of the devastation. Fortunately, there were many other earthquakes that relieved
some of the pressure. I have myself listed on google news to send me anything
on that area every day, so I should get any news quickly if anything happens
there.
Dee
Subj: RE: [1] Yellowstone
Date: 1/6/2004 9:51:58 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: susoni@xxx
Blue and Dee..
I have great respect for Dee's work.. Also yours Blue.. But my personal
observations and feelings on the subject are more along the lines of what
Blue's friend said. Dee could very well be right though. I'm watching both
sides at this point. Our Place is about 40 mins North of Yellowstone.
I have first hand knowledge from people who have visited the park this
summer. There are no dead animals laying all around as some reports suggust
and the sulfer smell is always there. It's not any more or any less then
usual .. Snow is still on the ground now too. I did read up on the eruption
data and came across this inforamtion (see below). My own personal 'feelings'
(and that of an etherical friend) are that it is going to have an eruption...
but it is what is called a hydrothermic one. I also 'feel' as if the damage
will flow westward and some south. I remember discusing this with Luigi some
months ago when the reports started... I was actualy thrilled to find this
report below. Lynda
Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2003 11:27:37 -0800 (PST)
From: "Lynda B" <susoni@xxx
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/faqs2.html
How often do volcanic eruptions occur at Yellowstone?
Three extremely large explosive eruptions have occurred at Yellowstone
in the past 2.1 million years with a recurrence interval of about 600,000
to 800,000 years. More frequent eruptions of basalt and rhyolite lava flows
have occurred before and after the large caldera-forming events. For example,
scientists have identified about 30 different rhyolite lava flows that erupted
after the most recent caldera eruptions, about 640,000 years ago, from vents
inside the caldera. The most recent was about 70,000 years ago. Many of these
eruptions were separated in time by several tens of thousandsof years. Because
the evidence of earlier eruptions may have been either buried or destroyed,
we do not really know how often the volcano has actually erupted.
When was the last time there was volcanism at Yellowstone?
The most recent volcanic activity consisted of rhyolitic lava flows that
erupted approximately 70,000 years ago. The largest of these flows formed
the Pitchstone Plateau in southwestern Yellowstone National Park.
How much volcanic activity has there been at Yellowstone since the most
recent giant eruption?
Since the most recent giant caldera-forming eruption, 640,000 years ago,
at least 30 smaller but still destructive volcanic eruptions have occurred
at Yellowstone. Some of the eruptions were approximately the size of the
devastating 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and several were much
larger.
What type of eruption will occur if Yellowstone erupts again?
Yellowstone's volcanic and hydrothermal history suggests the potential
for various kinds of eruptions in the future. The likelihood of a certain
type of eruption occurring in the future can be judged by how often eruptions
have occurred in the past.
The most likely type of eruption would not be volcanic but, rather,
hydrothermal. This type of small, but still explosive eruption can occur
from shallow reservoirs of steam or hot water rather than molten rock. These
reservoirs are the sources of Yellowstone's famous geysers, hot springs,
and fumaroles. Such explosions could blast out shallow craters more than
a kilometer wide; as has occurred in the northern Yellowstone Lake Basin,
including Mary Bay and nearby Turbid Lake and Indian Pond, and in western
Yellowstone National Park north of Old Faithful. Each of these craters was
produced by steam blasts within the past few thousand years.
YELLOWSTONE AREA HAS HAD SERIOUS QUAKES BEFORE:
1959 Earthquake News
QUAKE HITS HEBGEN
DEATH TOLL MOUNTS IN FACE OF MAJOR MONTANA DISASTER
HELENA, Mont. (AP)
Earthquakes hit the Northwest from British Columbia to Wyoming Monday
night and early today, leaving a mounting death toll over southwestern Montana.
The shocks were so severe a big Montana dam was damaged and a mountainside
toppled into a river.
Sixteen deaths were reported.
Six deaths were reported to Sheriff Lloyd Brook at Virginia City, by a
helicopter pilot who flew over the scene. The Idaho State Police in a radio
broadcast said there had been eight deaths. A radio station executive who
got into the area said he learned that two people had been buried by a landslide
in the Madison River canyon below the big slide area. He theorized more might
be dead.
There was no way, Civil Defense headquarters here said, of determining
whether there is duplication in the reports.
The report of the people covered by the slide came from Richard D. Smiley,
president and general manager of radio station KXXL at Bozeman, Mont., who
got into the stricken area as far as the big slide. He said he was told that
three boys escaped the same slide.
The helicopter pilot told Sheriff Brooks he had counted the six bodies
during a flight over the scene.
The quakes shook Yellowstone National Park, filled with summer tourists.
Dean Stone, managing editor of the Maryville-Alcoa (Tenn.) Times, was
among the tourists routed by the quake. He said the hotel and Mammoth Hot
Springs rumbled for several minutes and that at least one auto was trapped
inside the park by a rockslide.
Dr. W. A. Melther, manning a hospital in Ashton, east Idaho town, said
he treated half a dozen minor injury cases from West Yellowstone. Three or
four of the people, he said, were pretty badly shaken up.
He said there is a general exodus from the western gateway of the park,
57 miles northeast of Ashton.
The assistant chief ranger at Yellowstone Park, Frank Sylvester, said
most west side roads were closed by slides but tourist travel was carried
on through other entrances. A water main broke in the eastern wing of Old
Faithful Inn.
He reported there appeared to be no damage to Old Faithful and other famed
geysers and scenic features in the park.
He said the last heavy tremor in the park was in 1924 and that the geysers
also escaped damage.
He reported roads closed by rockslides included south from Mammoth, Norris
Junction to Madison Junction and from Old Faithful to Madison Junction.
Most of the residents of Ennis, Mont., about 50 miles downstream from
Hebgen Dam, were evacuated in the predawn hours but about a hundred remained.
The evacuation was ordered when it appeared the third of a million acre feet
in Hebgen Lake might pour down on them. The evacuation was called off when
the mountainside blocked the river so tightly it shut off all the stream's
flow.
Many of those who left Ennis went to nearby Virginia City, famed in Western
lore as the birthplace of the Vigilantes.
The first quake struck at 11:30 p.m. (MST).
All tourists staying in the town were awakened at 2 a.m. and were advised
to get out. The same advice was given to tourists at Three Forks, several
miles downstream.
Civil Defense Director Potter appealed for helicopters to aid in the rescue
and asked the U.S. Forest Service to send in a smokejumper equipped with
a radio to help organize the people. A smokejumper is a parachutist who jumps
into forest fire areas to fight blazes.
The search and rescue coordinating center of the 4th Air Force at Hamilton
Field, near San Francisco, said it is mustering helicopters to try to rescue
the marooned persons. The 'copters are being rounded up from Hill Air Force
Base, Utah; Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, and the Army at Ft. Lewis,
Wash.
Varied reports came out of the condition of Hebgen Dam. The Montana Power
Co., which owns it, said it was damaged at the top and that it "could go."
At various times through early morning hours there were reports it had "gone
out."
The fatalities were reported by a helicopter pilot, who said he counted
the bodies as he circled the area.
Two of the dead were in the Cliff Lake area, killed when a quake sent
a cliff hurtling down on them. Another was believed to be in the Wade Lake
area. The Sheriff at Virginia City, Mont., did not know where the other bodies
were seen. He had no identification of the victims.
Bulletin
The first four injured persons brought to the hospital here at 2 p.m.
today were identified as Margaret Holmes, 72, of Billings; Ray N. Painter,
46, and his wife, 42, of Ogden, Utah, and Clarence D. Scott, 59, Fresno,
Calif.
The Billings woman and Mr. and Mrs. Painter were listed as surgical
patients.
The condition of the patients was not immediately available.
Four other injured persons were expected momentarily. [Bozeman Daily
Chronicle; August 18, 1959]
monitor the hot spots now
http://goes.higp.hawaii.edu/
Here is a link to a BBC Horizon documentary on supervolcanoes. Talks alot
about yellowstone.
The transcript is a long read but very informative.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/supervolcanoes.shtml
Check links out.
http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/disaster2.html
http://www.utoronto.ca/env/lib_hold/db1/files/9630.htm
the direction of the winds and upper jet stream would also be a factor
on where the ash goes
just check here:
http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/JetStream.html
jet stream map, current
http://www.wunderground.com/US/Region/US/WindSpeed.html
surface wind direction, current
GREATDREAMS - EARTHQUAKE NEWS
... During the first two months of 2001, there were seven earthquakes with
magnitudes of 7.0 or higher with over 35,000 deaths ...
Enceladus was feared and revered as the god of seismic tremors and volcanos.
...
http://www.greatdreams.com/gdquakes.htm
POLAR AXIS SPIN - The Current Location Of The Spin Axis
...
http://www.greatdreams.com/motion.htm
POLAR MOTION - A PROPHECY -
This will make the eruption of volcanos in the vertical upthrusts of up to
seven ft. ...
http://www.greatdreams.com/spinaxis.htm
Sylvester the Cat and Speedy Gonzales - May 5, 2003
... disasters, weather changes, storms, earthquakes, volcanos, meteors hitting
... event during May, 2003
http://www.greatdreams.com/sylvester.htm
DREAMS, PROPHECY AND NEWS OF VOLCANOES
... There had been 14 scheduled to be linked to blow up all at once,
but the Gods/spirits
managed to get it down to seven so mankind didn't have to suffer quite
http://www.greatdreams.com/volcano2.htm
NEW PROPHECIES FROM JUST REGULAR PEOPLE
... saw the number seven.. ... Volcanos had erupted spewing ash and rock
into the atmosphere,
but most had been contained by the swirling waters
http://www.greatdreams.com/regular_prophecy.htm
DEE'S DREAMS AND VISIONS - JANUARY, 1999
Seven volcanos currently active. Mudslides and avalanches
killing more people in the last year than ever before....
http://www.greatdreams.com/jan99.htm
COLIMA, MEXICO - EARTHQUAKE - 1-22-2003
... A man in Comala, seven miles north of the capital, Colima, said the
quake
was strong but lasted less than a minute. ....
http://www.greatdreams.com/colima.htm
VOLCANO
DISASTERS
Yellowstone National Park
Reservations and park information.
http://www.yellowstone.cc
Yellowstone Travel Packet
Park. Includes 2lbs of brochures.
http://www.areatravelpackets.com
Visit Yellowstone
Plan a Yellowstone Park vacation
http://www.yellowstoneparktraveler.com
Yellowstone National Park (National Park Service)
Yellowstone National Park Located in Yellowstone National Park, ID,MT,WY.
...
http://www.nps.gov/yell/
Yellowstone National Park - The Official Home Page
... | Current Issues. Yellowstone Profile Pages | NPS ParkNet Home
http://www.nps.gov/yell/home.htm
Yellowstone Net -- Welcome to Yellowstone National Park!
Online Reservations and extensive information for first-time visitors
and long-time lovers of Yellowstone National Park. ...
http://www.yellowstone.net/
Yellowstone Net Newspaper
http://www.yellowstone.net
News from National Park Service and road reports.
http://www.yellowstone.net/newspaper/
Yellowstone National Park -- The Total Yellowstone Page
"A thousand Yellowstone wonders are calling, 'Look up and down and round
about you!'" John Muir - 1898 ... Yellowstone Glacier Adventures. ...
http://www.yellowstone-natl-park.com/
SUPERVOLCANOES
- INTERVIEW ON THE BBC
Welcome to the Yellowstone Association
The non-profit Yellowstone Association offers books, maps, videos and other
materials
about Yellowstone National Park, classes through its Yellowstone Park ...
http://yellowstoneassociation.org/
Yellowstone Art Museum - Home Page
Formerly known as Yellowstone Art Center, the museum's purpose is to exhibit,
document,
collect and preserve contemporary and historic western art
http://yellowstone.artmuseum.org/
Yellowstone National Park--Pictures and Information For Kids
Kids logo, Parents:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/yellowstone/
Yellowstone Geographic
Yellowstone Geographic provides information about the Greater Yellowstone
Region including Yellowstone National Park, and Teton National Park. ...
http://www.yellowstonegeographic.com/
Blue Geyser was called Iris Spring
in 1886. Due to a misread map label, in 1904 the feature was inadvertently
given its current name. It was observed to erupt to heights of over 60 feet from 1993 to 1996. It became almost dormant in 1997 and has remained very
quiet ever since. Blue Geyser's last observed eruption was in February of
1997.
Ledge is the second largest
geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin, capable of shooting water 125 feet into
the air. Because it erupts at an angle, however, the water will sometimes
reach the ground 220 feet away. It has at times in the past erupted at regular
intervals of 14 hours. The geyser became inactive between 1979 and late 1993.
It erupted on a fairly regular cycle of every four to six days in 1994 and
1995.
Little Whirligig got its
name because of its close proximity to Whirligig Geyser. Whirligig was so named because while erupting its water swirls in its crater. The orange-yellow
iron oxide deposits around Little Whirligig make it one of the most colorful
features in Porcelain Basin. It has been dormant for several years.
The hottest of Yellowstone's
geothermal features are steam vents (fumaroles). Black Growler Steam Vent,
on the hillside in front of you, has measured 199 to 280 degrees F (93 to
138 degrees C). A plentiful water supply would help cool these features;
however, steam vents are usually found on hillsides or higher ground, above
the basin's water supply. They rapidly boil away what little water they contain,
releasing steam and other gases forcefully from 
The world's tallest active
geyser, Steamboat can erupt to more than 300 feet (90m), showering viewers with its mineral-rich waters. For hours following its rare 3 to 40 minute
major eruptions, Steamboat thunders with powerful jets of steam. As befitting
such an awesome event, full eruptions are entirely unpredictable. In recent
years, Steamboat has had three major eruptions. This photo is the May 2,
2000 eruption.
Dramatic behavioral changes
have characterized Porkchop Geyser during the last decade. Once a small hot
spring that occasionally erupted, Porkchop Geyser became a continuous spouter
in the spring of 1985. The force of the spray caused a roar that could be
heard at the museum over 660 yards (603m) away. On September 5, 1989, Porkchop
Geyser exploded. Rocks surrounding the old vent were upended and some were
thrown more than 216 feet (66m) from the feature. Porkchop Geyser is now
a gently rolling hot spring.
Minute Geyser's eruptions have
changed dramatically. Its larger west vent is clogged with rocks tossed in
by early visitors when the park's main road was near this trail and passed
within 70 feet of the geyser. Minute once erupted every 60 seconds, sometimes
to heights of 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 meters). Eruptions now are irregular
and originate from its smaller east vent. Removal of the west vent's
mineral-cemented rocks would require the use of heavy equipment resulting
in severe damage.
Echinus (e-KI-nus) Geyser
was a perennial crowd-pleaser which typically erupted every 35 to 75 minutes.
Late in 1998 this geyser altered its interval and now erupts only a few times
per day at best. Its pool fills gradually with water; then suddenly, bursts
of steam and water explode 40 to 60 feet (12 to 18 m) skyward. Eruptions
usually last about 4 minutes but in the past major eruptions have lasted
as long as 118 minutes. The major eruptions were believed to be caused by
a secondary water source which has mysteriously vanished. There has not been
a major eruption in 3 years. In late 1998 Echinus' performance diminished
and became erratic. As of mid-1999 its eruptions remain unpredictable.
