Replies

I'd never heard or read this before.

This hot spot theory for Ystone has been around for a long time. AFA the quake swarm - interesting but you can still make plans to visit the park this summer. People here have been making more of this quake swarm than what is warranted. They are not evidence of an impending eruption. The same 650,000 year recurrence has been talked about for the last 50+ years and is no different from when the next big asteroid strike will be (we are apparently overdue there too).

The park is seismically instrumented to look for specific seismic indicators of magma movement towards the surface. These are called harmonic tremors and they are very well studied and known now a days. Were those type tremors to be observed, then there would be reason for concern. Ystone has recently ended a period of uplift in portions of the caldera and this swarm is along the western edge of the caldera fault zone, evidence of relieving stress - nothing more.

A more realistic concern is a steam explosion type event that has created some rather large features in the post eruption history of the park. But swarms are not a precursor.

A more realistic concern is a steam explosion type event that has created some rather large features in the post eruption history of the park. But swarms are not a precursor.<<<

All that energy going to waste.

Thanks for pinging me, I know very little about Yellowstone.

Thanks, Godzilla for sharing your expertise here. I've read lots of webpages about Yellowstone, and had never seen it mentioned that the "Hot Spot" may never have a chance to erupt - it's interesting to learn that geologists have been discussing that possibility for a long time.

Last night I happened to hear Hugh Hewitt mention that there was a swarm of earthquakes at Yellowstone, and as far as I knew that was 'news' in mid-January, so decided to come online and find out what he was talking about currently occurring there.

Amazing how many people are really scaring large segments of the population, it's kind of reminescent of the global warming debacle.