Yellowstone might go on first stage alert soon.

USGS ^ | 2/10/2010 | Myself

[Steve Van Doorn]

Since January 17, 2010 Yellowstone has had the second largest swarm ever recorded. The swarms have been steady at about 10 miles in depth and they have subsided a few days ago.

In the past two days the depth has raised up to around 7 miles and in the past couple hours quakes vastly increased.

http://www.quake.utah.edu/helicorder/ymr_webi.htm
http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/111-44.html

Remember this doesn’t mean we will see an eruption and it most likely means a normal volcano. It is very unlikely we will see a caldera eruption.
But these changes are significant and cannot be over looked

Some history:
Since the most recent giant caldera-forming eruption, 640,000 years ago, approximately 80 relatively nonexplosive eruptions have occurred. Of these eruptions, at least 27 were rhyolite lava flows in the caldera, 13 were rhyolite lava flows outside the caldera and 40 were basalt vents outside the caldera. Some of the eruptions were approximately the size of the devastating 1991 Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, and several were much larger. The most recent volcanic eruption at Yellowstone, a lava flow on the Pitchstone Plateau, occurred 70,000 years ago.

[oldfart]

As I understand these things, a volcano that has some sort of pressure relief valve has a smaller chance of a violent eruption.

If you’ve seen Al Gore recently you’d realize he’d just plug up the works and cause a real disaster!

[SuperLuminal]

Yep! You can just imagine the opportunities that obamao and rhambo are drooling over if only they can get a major eruption to cause some chaos...

WH-style commonsense will dictate:

1. Confiscation of all weapons in the hands of serfs;
2. Shutdown of all talk radio; and,
3. Executive order eliminating Presidential term limits.

Yep! They must be salivating and plotting...

[winoneforthegipper]

This tensor graph from a quake last month has it recorded as a 4.3.

That was never reported as such?

http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/FM/neic_rtav_rmt.html

[ETL]

Now a caldera is sunken in and really wide. Do scientists have any way of knowing if it was a caldera when it blew??

I believe there WAS a mountain there before the last super eruption. If you look at the topography in that region (the hot spot trail) you'll see that a whole lot of mountains have been blown away by past eruptions. The browns and tans are existing mountains.

Figure 1. Path of the Yellowstone hotspot. Yellow and orange ovals show volcanic centers where the hotspot produced one or more caldera eruptions- essentially "ancient Yellowstones"- during the time periods indicated. As North America drifted southwest over the hotspot, the volcanism progressed northeast, beginning in northern Nevada and southeast Oregon 16.5 million years ago and reaching Yellowstone National Park 2 million years ago. A bow-wave or parabola-shaped zone of mountains (browns and tans) and earthquakes (red dots) surrounds the low elevations (greens) of the seismically quiet Snake River Plain. The greater Yellowstone "geoecosystem" is outlined in blue. Faults are in black.

NAME URL

[Quix]

You could well be right.

. . . There must be vast audiences who’d thank the facilitators.

/s

LOL.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Krakatau Caldera was about 7-km-wide (over 4 miles)

[combat_boots]

Thank you. I am not usually given to such openness about my life here—or anywhere, for that matter.

[jackibutterfly]

"It is blows and destroys several states just think of all the jobs it will create!"

WHICH states????

[ETL]

Now a caldera is sunken in and really wide. Do scientists have any way of knowing if it was a caldera when it blew??

These types of volcanoes don't really form the familiar cone-shaped structures. They tend to blow all at once in a very violent explosion. If a mountain happens to be above it at the time it blows, goodbye mountain! The Northern American plate slowly moves over the source of the volcanism (a volcanic "hot spot"), carrying the land surface with it.

[Steve Van Doorn]

Stick Al Gore down old Fateful and watch him get blown out. Sounds like fun.

[70times7]

Save it for a moose hunt. Moose tastes a lot better than elk.

A Møøse once bit my sister...

No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"...

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

[gunnut]

Bush’s fault.

[Kartographer]

It looks like this if you shake your monitor really hard>

[Arizona Carolyn]

At least half the country -- this map shows areas affected by the previous erruptions...

http://www.damninteresting.net/content/Yellowstone_Ash_Fall_Map.jpg

[Steve Van Doorn]

It would be easier to ask which states will not be effected.

[Kartographer]

"If I was west of the Mississippi, I'd bug out NOW!"
Why? All the ash will blow west!

[ETL]

LOL! I have no idea what you said. But it’s funny as hell anyway!

[PennsylvaniaMom]

Bookmark for later.

[Arizona Carolyn]

and here is another even more detailed map of previous erruptions...

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.brendans-island.com/blogsource/YellowstoneEventMap-9.jpg&imgrefurl=http://apatheticlemming.blogspot.com/2009/02/attention-governor-jinal-volcanos-go.html&h=484&w=600&sz=47&tbnid=NPe4vqgUaGBNPM:&tbnh=109&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyellowstone%2Beruption%2Bmap&hl=en&usg=__YFctv-ThWraQbgax0R0IS3ySbS0=&ei=PAhpS-f4DdGOtgf3pLHfBg&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=6&ct=image&ved=0CBYQ9QEwBQ

[combat_boots]

Well, I can tell you that based ont he St. Helens blow in 1980, that is going to depend, if this does happen. It was a wild time, having to clean ash from a ‘smoking’ mountain off your windshield north of Seattle. Every dang day. And the rain just made it mushy. People kept having to change their air cleaners in their cars.

You’d see people on bridges lined up, one after the other, watching St. Helens smoke. Then there came THE BULGE.

The position of the bulge appeared to indicate a blowout coming toward the NE, IIRC, so the USGS pounced with their copters and geologists and people measuring things all over. There were evacuations, especially around Spirit Lake and the vacation area there, on the left/west of the mountain.

There was this one old salt, Harry Truman, who owned a lodge up on Spirit Lake. He wouldn’t leave. The government may have forceably removed him, but he went back.

The bulge got bigger & bigger until one Sunday morning, at about 8:30 am, Ka-Boom. I was up in the inside passage and I heard it. Clear as day. Thought a naval base was signaling the time or something, but the sound had traveled over water, of course. Div arty would wish it were that loud.

Clear skies! Glorious day! And then the clouds came and it commenced to rain. And rain.

Later, I drove down I-5 and drove over the Toutle River bridge that was hauling so much of the sludge and trees and mountainside down toward the Columbia River and on to the Pacific there at Longview/Portland, close by where Lewis and Clark had been.

Old Harry Truman never was found, and the mountain changed, of course. Big old snow plows swept ash from I-90. But the peach and apple crops were enriched beyond measure, with earth now fertilized by Mt. St. Helens and God Almighty.

I, however, grew to miss my tea time on Mt. St. Helens.