Geologists witness rare *Yellowstone Explosion*

http://www.ktvq.com/Global/story.asp?S=10416002 ^ | May 24th, 2009

[TaraP]

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP) - A geologist at Yellowstone National Park was in the middle of a lecturing a group of colleagues on the rarity of hydrothermal explosions earlier this month when, all of a sudden, one went off just behind him.

Geologist Hank Heasler was giving a lecture in the Biscuit Basin on May 17 when a hot pool behind him exploded. It spewed mud, rocks and hot water about 50 feet in the air.

Geologists only know of only a handful of such unpredictable explosions in YellowstoneÂ’s recorded history. Heasler and the others were just out of reach of the hot showering hot water and other debris.

yellowstone is building...

at 125 microvolts these are significant quakes today madison river valley [link to www.isthisthingon.org]

at 500mv....THESE ARE significant...quakes lake yellowstone [link to www.isthisthingon.org]

[EternalVigilance]

We are all going to die. Run into the streets, run around in circles, run diagonally, then run octagonally, then try a dodecahedron, run run run, the sky is falling and it is going to fall on YOU!

Hey, as long as it doesn't cut back on the bread and circuses...

[Myrddin]

I visit Yellowstone often. There is a geyser in the southwest part of the Norris basin that exploded within the last 10 years. There are before/after pictures posted in the area. I think the big geyser at Midway (near the river side) is also a geyser damaged by an explosion.

For all the trips I've taken to Yellowstone, I've never felt an earthquake while walking around in the park. I have been nearly at the epicenter of a 5.5 magnitude quake in the Federal Way, WA area in 1964. It very nearly knocked over all the furniture in the living room. The Landers quake dumped all my wife's shoe boxes off their perch in the closet and onto my sleeping hide. What a wake up.

[NorCoGOP]

We are all going to die. Run into the streets, run around in circles, run diagonally, then run octagonally, then try a dodecahedron, run run run, the sky is falling and it is going to fall on YOU!

Hey! Joe Biden! Good to see you on FR finally!

[GOP Poet]

coo-el! :-D

[griffin]

Why, is God on the edge of reality?

[Domandred]

Found one.

[RinaseaofDs]

That would do it, but probably to the wrong people.

Better still if the swamp that Washington DC was built on would open up and swallow it whole.

[Rebelbase]

“The Landers quake dumped all my wife’s shoe boxes off their perch in the closet and onto my sleeping hide. What a wake up. “

Sleeping in the closet? This outta be good.........

[EggsAckley]

I live in a dodecahedron. Heheh.

[Myrddin]

The closet door is about 18 inches from the edge of the bed. My wife left her side of the closet doors open. That just happens to be the end of the closet that is close the the head of the bed. I sleep on that side of the bed as well. I had about 10 shoe boxes ejected onto me and the bed. The remainder landed on the floor between the bed and closet door. I had to push the boxes off and crawl to the foot of the bed to get out. That's just not what you want around 5 in the morning.

[houeto]

There’s a lot of stuff that has been “going on” out there for quite a long time in human history...

...and as a Star Traveler, you would know! ;-)

[Quix]

THX

WILL CHECK IT OUT.

[OB1kNOb]

I am just as well prepared for a super volcano.

See post #9. Are you sure?

[Star Traveler]

[Star Traveler]

This map (post #34) is like the maps I recall seeing. It reflects more of the reality of people actually seeing an ashfall in their areas, from Mt. St. Helens, even if it might have been 1/2 an inch and below.

—

“A volcanic ash column rose 80,000 feet (24,400 m) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens

—

And let me tell you, even an ashfall of 1/10 of an inch can be heck to be around. Something like that fell in Portland (some weeks or months later, when the wind was going to the south, and thus hit us) — and boy, there were swirls of ash-clouds for every car that drove down the road. And everyone in town went out and got those masks... LOL...

Now, the interesting thing about this map is that you see an isolated yellow circle — all by itself (around the Tulsa, OK area and somewhat into the Oklahoma City surroundings, too (slightly).

Now, this is very interesting, because there is not a continuous cloud from St. Helens to this area. It’s just isolated and all by itself.

SO..., this appears to be the *initial blast* of the Mt. St. Helens, when it “uncorked”. That initial blast, when it started going straight up into the stratosphere, would have “punched a hole” in the sky and shot that initial amount of ash *further away*, and then it would have “settled back” into a “continuous eruption” for the next 9 hours... or so...

That isolated area appears to be the ashfall from that initial “punching a hole” in the sky from that first blast.

[Star Traveler]

You said — For all the trips I’ve taken to Yellowstone, I’ve never felt an earthquake while walking around in the park.

—

I was just getting back in the car with my daughter (a youngster at the time) and she hopped in and I got in after her and then the car started rocking back and forth. I thought, at first, that she was jumping up and down in the back seat of the car (she did that sometimes... :-) ...). So, I turned around and was going to tell her to stop it, but she wasn’t doing it.

People who had been in their cars, at the time, jumped out of them and were looking around. My car was rocking back and forth, and I got out, too. When I had been in the car, just before getting out, I could hear the gas in the tank really sloshing around.

It wasn’t too long of one, but it was definitely one of the bigger ones. Most of them are very small (of those 1,000 or so a year that hit Yellowstone, normally). But, on the material that tourists get, I did notice a warning about being on the boardwalks when an earthquake hit. It was possible that someone could lose their balance and fall off the boardwalk, and into the surrounding area, which could be really hot water or mud or whatever (for whatever the boardwalk was going around in).

—

You mentioned an earthquake in 1964, well there was one not too many years ago, that I remember quite well, the “effects” felt in the Portland area, in the year 2001.

A blurb from an earthquake website — “The earthquake most widely felt in Oregon was the February 28 Nisqually earthquake, centered near Olympia, Washington. The deep-seated, magnitude 6.8 event was felt throughout most of Oregon and as far away as Salt Lake City.”

Now that one rocked the building I was in, a Condo unit, third floor up, for a full minute. The building was really rocking on that one, and being up on the third floor, I was starting to think that this earthquake was going to go into a full-blown all-out one, since it had not quit for about a minute. I was thinking that, at any second, it could go “big”, because of how long it was going and going... LOL... I was just about ready to get out of the building, because I thought it was going to come down... :-)

Of course, at the time it happened, I didn’t know it was centered in Olympia, Washington.

—

Then there was the “Spring Break Quake” in Portland, in 1993...

Quote from Wikipedia — The Scotts Mills earthquake (often referred to locally as the “Spring Break Quake”), which occurred in the U.S. state of Oregon on March 25, 1993 at 5:34 a.m. PST, with ML = 5.6, was the largest earthquake in the Pacific Northwest since the Elk Lake and Goat Rocks earthquakes of 1981.

I happened to have gone to work early and was in the office of a three-story building, on the bottom floor and it hit the building, two times, really hard, like some big semi-truck had smashed into the building and then things started rocking. Well, that was one time that I didn’t wait two seconds and I was out of the building as fast as I could go. I stood in the street looking around and there were a few other people around in the streets, too, even though it was early in the morning...

That’s not all the earthquakes that have been in the Portland area or felt there, so it gets a bit interesting at times.

They say that Portland could be in for the “big one” at some time in the future (within possibly 50 years), with up to a potential 10.0 magnitude quake..., since it’s in the Cascadia Subduction Zone. I’ve seen them say 9.0 and a few articles I’ve read have said 10.0. I guess they produce really big ones, and it could possibly go up that large. Also, it can possibly produce a tsunami, off the Oregon Coast of possibly 100 foot tall. I wouldn’t want to be on the Oregon Coast for that one... :-)

[Myrddin]

I have 3 sort of "amusing" earthquake experiences from my days at PacBell. One afternoon I was working at 525 B St (Union Bank building) in downtown San Diego. My office was on the 15th floor. The ceilings are 15 ft in that building. Drapes were full length. We had an earthquake that was not only making the curtains sway, but the adjacent tall buildings were whipping like huge blades of grass. A few folks needed a change of underclothing after that one.

A couple years later I was working at the new data center. We had 6 ft racks with 4 Fujitsu Eagle drives (about 150 lbs each). The racks were lined up into multiple aisles about 30 ft long with a 2 ft aisle between the drive lineups. It was decided that a U shaped bar over the aisle would be advisable for earthquake bracing. The bars were installed and during the night there was a 5.8 earthquake in El Centro. The morning status message proclaimed the earthquake bracing was installed and successfully tested.

Another year later, I was working on some awful LU6.2 interface code between an HP-UX machine and an IBM mainframe. There was only one test machine in San Francisco, so I had to wait 3 weeks between my 1 hour test windows. My test window started at 5 PM. The IBM techs had a bunch of things to modify before we could start. Just as they were ready to start, the clock read 5:08 PM. The Loma Prieta earthquake was underway. My test window was lost for another 3 weeks. One of my co-workers was sitting in a dentist's chair on the 10th floor of a building in downtown San Francisco. The lights went out. He walked to street level in the fire escape stairs, then walked all the way back to his car...15 miles...because BART was out of service.

I had a college friend whose house was completely demolished by an earthquake in the Morgan Hill area.