Posted on 02/02/2010 7:06:54 PM PST by 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.
yellowstone ping
How far the ash cloud spreads, direction, depth depend on wind speed direction AND duration of the event. You’ve got at least 400 cubic kilometers of stuff to come out. A inch of two on your roof of the ash could be enough to make it colapse - snowing concrete.
Laz, I never pictured you as enjoying deflation. ;>
20 people or so died in the St. Helen eruption VEI 5, but a VEI of 9 or better means is really bad. None of us can imagine how bad - even the TV versions are only speculative. The last super volcano erution in human history (Mt Toba in 74,000 BC) nearly made the human race extinct. Yellowstone could do exactly the same. Do no underestimate Mother Nature’s fury.
The ash fall alone on roof tops: think someone pouring concrete on it. All modern roofs would collapse - so where would you find shelter? Don’t even imagine where you would find food - it would not be in the grocery store for starters.
Then there would be a winter lasting years. Got oil? Got electricity?
Add to list:
77,000,000 - Elk Horn Mountain super volcano eruption in Montana covered an estimated 26,000 kilometres to a depth of approximately 4 kilometres.
I am a geologist and a native Montanan, I've followed the activity in the park most of my life. Here is the YVO interpretation of the swarm's significance (from Jan 28)
Yellowstone Volcano Observatory scientists still consider that the swarm events are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults and are not thought to be caused by underground movement of magma. Currently there is no indication of premonitory volcanic or hydrothermal activity, but ongoing observations and analyses will continue to evaluate these different sources.
Earthquake swarms are common for the park. This one is unusual for the number - but also because of the enhanced intrumenation in the park to monitor them. Interesting, but I wouldn't cancel my trip to the park this summer over it.
That one’s a LOT closer to the 4 corners area than Yellowstone!
I sure hope it’s good and dead for sure!
:), one of Earth’s gifts.
So this is just a “Rumbling” as in my Intestines? ;)
Coming soon to _________ TV.
My relatives live slightly east of Yakima. They got inches of the stuff.
If so, then you have some large intestines. ;P
I do. Fortunately no large explosions or tremors; yet.
lol
Am curious where the ash cloud tends to circle the earth in terms of height and height of rain clouds that might carry some of it to earth???
I’d think that 4kmtrs would trouble the tomato patch quite a lot.
True . . . since lost in many moves.
just as long as it’s only on the TV in my area!
Would that make it.....a “stimulus eruption”?
Sounds like something out of a porn film. [/cheesy wah guitar music]
I remember..I was there.
I was out at Fairchild AFB for their open house (it was still a SAC base back then). I hadn’t known that St. Helens had erupted when I got there at about 11 in the morning. I was walking through one of the hangers that had a number of exhibits, including a a mobile MARS (Military Auxilliary Radio System) station. The operator had just signed on, and he was talking (via ham radio) to someone over in Toutle, WA. He wrote something on a clipboard and hung it up so everyone could see: “Mt. St Helens erupted 8:30am this morning. Reports say top mile of mountain is gone”.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. The mountain was 250 miles away...what could it possibly do to us here in Spokane?
Two hours later, the military threw up a cordon around the SR-71 that was visiting from Nevada (I think) and towed it into a hanger. I asked an airman why, and the airman said “Because of the ash. We need to protect the engines”. Ash?? What does he mean by that? I looked to the west and saw what looked like a line of storms way off in the distance. No storms were predicted for that day.
Thirty minutes later, the announcers said the base was going to close early, and asked everyone to go home. I took the bus out there, and it wasn’t scheduled to come for another 3 hours. Well, they got a bus out there...just as the leading edge of the ash cloud got to the base. By the time we left (in the middle of a traffic jam from Hell), there was nothing but an orange strip of light along the eastern horizon. 30 minutes later, it was gone. Pitch black. Street lights on, and stuff falling from the sky that looked like gray snow and smelled like a cross beteen sulfur and smoke. It was the second-most scared I’d ever been.
(It USED to be the first, but the 6.8 magnitude Nisqually Quake on Feb. 28, 2001 took its place.)
My family didn’t go outside until Tuesday. It was the nastiest clean-up job I’ve ever done, and we only got an inch or two.
I don’t even want to think what would happen if Yellowstone went off.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.