Yellowstone Update: 22 more quakes in last 6 hours

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/43.45.-111.-109_eqs.php ^

[MittFan08]

Excerpt:

MAP 2.4 2008/12/30 00:36:39 44.510 -110.384 0.2 60 km ( 37 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT

MAP 2.4 2008/12/29 21:25:15 44.525 -110.360 2.0 61 km ( 38 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT

[MittFan08]

For those following the Yellowstone earthquake events, they really seem to have picked up in recent hours. Some of them are very shallow as well- from .2 km to "0 km" which I expect means a few hundred feet. Still nothing unprecedented by any means, but there's always the off chance that a hydrothermal explosion could be brewing. Those are basically huge steam explosions which can cause new lakes and ponds to be formed. They are only a danger locally. No reason to suspect anything more dire at this point, though some have noted in the earlier thread that Drudge pulled the story from his webpage.

[LiberConservative]

Yellowstone has been scaring the crap out of me all day. Really.

[xcamel]

IIRC - swarms are a really bad “omen” for lack of a better term..

[Travis McGee]

On the bright side, if the Yellowstone Mega Volcano blows, the economy won’t matter.

[George from New England]

It seems that earth is shaking with more frequency than any of us have to take a crap.

[Dallas59]

Looks like they’re all around that lake.

[ScreamingFist]

You’re starting to scare me now.........YOU said the chances are non-existence in the other thread.....;)

[patton]

LOL - and no one will care where the 0ne was spawned.

[MittFan08]

Ok, I’m officially worried- usually these experts say “nothing to worry about- happens all the time.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hklq5saMBlMynv31EbfNSka-SpOwD95CL4J80

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Scientists are closely monitoring more than 250 small earthquakes that have occurred in Yellowstone National Park since Friday.

Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone. But Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah, says it’s very unusual to have so many over several days.

The largest tremor was Saturday and measured magnitude 3.8.

Smith says it’s hard to say what might be causing the tremors but notes that Yellowstone is very geologically active.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Yeah, but will it stop the Global Warming Warriors?

[coop223]

who are the nature nazi's going to sue if jellystone blows its top?

[blackbart.223]

"On the bright side, if the Yellowstone Mega Volcano blows, the economy won’t matter."

Boom!

[briarbey b]

some have noted in the earlier thread that Drudge pulled the story from his webpage.
***
Drudge pulled and the search engine pulled 6 links. There is only one last time I checked. Could there be more concern than we are aware of? Weird...the media is usually hot on anything that will panic us which these days is just about everything!!! LOL

[Momaw Nadon]

"only a danger locally"

What does "locally" mean?

[MrLee]

“On the bright side, if the Yellowstone Mega Volcano blows, the economy won’t matter.”

Ok, I admit this is an area that I know nothing about, so explain your comments to me. Thanks.

[blam]

Toba was the last super-volcano to blow. Read about it in the article linked below:

Late Pleostocene Human Population Bottlenecks. . . (Toba)

"The last glacial period was preceded by 1000 years of the coldest temperatures of the Late Pleistocene, apparently caused by the eruption of the Mount Toba volcano. The six year long volcanic winter and 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption may have decimated Modern Man's entire population. Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. The survivors from this global catastrophy would have found refuge in isolated tropical pockets, mainly in Equatorial Africa. Populations living in Europe and northern China would have been completely eliminated by the reduction of the summer temperatures by as much as 12 degrees centigrade."

[patton]

Won’t be any lawyers left, I afraid, so it is a moot question.

It would be biblical. Cats and dogs, living together...

[autumnraine]

This is from January of this year (satellite infrared image at link: http://www.earthmountainview.com/yellowstone/yellowstone.htm

Satellite images acquired by ESA’s ERS-2 revealed the recently discovered changes in Yellowstone’s caldera are the result of molten rock movement 15 kilometres below the Earth’s surface, according to a recent study published in Nature.

Using Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry, InSAR for short, Charles Wicks, Wayne Thatcher and other U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists mapped the changes in the northern rim of the caldera, or crater, and discovered it had risen about 13 centimetres from 1997 to 2003.

InSAR, a sophisticated version of ‘spot the difference’, involves mathematically combining different radar images, acquired from as near as possible to the same point in space at different times, to create digital elevation models and reveal otherwise undetectable changes occurring between image acquisitions.

“We know now how mobile and restless the Yellowstone caldera actually is. Ground-based measurements can be more efficiently deployed because of our work,” Thatcher said. “The research could not have been done without satellite radar data.”

[conivorous]

I remember there was a swarm of earthquakes earlier this year in Reno, Nevada that had scientists pretty worried....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_earthquakes_of_2008