Hydrothermal Explosions - more common than you think! (Yellowstone Monthly Update - Dec 2024)

[@llamalover02]

These are always the best. We need more fun USGS videos like this!! What about how other active volcanoes are monitored?

[@Pottery4Life]

Thank you, Mike and the USGS YVO team!

[@frzstat]

I always learn something on this channel

[@williamlloyd3769]

When I was stationed at Naval Air Station (NAS) Keflavik, Iceland in 1979-80, there was a hydrothermal explosion near the original geyser location. Interesting to see a video on this type of event after all these years. Thanks USGS.

[@gus473]

Well done and interesting as ever! Excellent photos and video clips! Thank you!

[@dancooper8551]

Thanks Mike! Love these monthly updates.

[@timroot4207]

Thank you !!!

[@kymkauffman5000]

Love these and really love the ones you do with professor Shawn Woolsey!

[@nooneherebutuschickens5201]

Thanks, as always, for your in UT eresting monthly updates! And I will echo what one of the previous commenters said. Some of the other USGS volcano observation teams should try this as well.

[@llamalover02]

Yes, the other observatories should get on board with this!

[@TallSky]

Thank you ~ I'm learning a lot from this channel!

[@toddnelson1260]

Thank you so much for your great reports. I worked at Yellowstone at the Old Faithful Inn some forty odd years ago and so these reports are like letters from home :) Well Done!!!

[@wimm0926]

Science is wonderful

[@just_kos99]

That's weird -- I told KZbin to send me notifications of posts from USGS then realized I hadn't heard the latest update! Once again, in a non-USGS video, I had to assure people that Yellowstone is NOT on the brink of super-erupting! Someone opined that if Long Valley erupted it'd trigger Yellowstone and I had to explain that it doesn't work that way.

[@cindyrissal3628]

SO glad to be a subscriber! Love these videos...so fascinating & I learn so much. Thank you! I just gotta take another trip to Yellowstone! (Besides, its kinda fun to shut down the people that are terrified that the super volcano is going to go off any minute...😅)

[@volcanoenjoyer]

Siick

[@SpecialSP]

What is the music that is on your videos? I find it very relaxing. Thank you, as always.

[@Emanuel-XIII]

You should go on the JRE podcast

[@melodyscamman244]

Watched yesterday, but thought of a question this morning... ¿How far EAST of Yellowstone does USGS monitor for land deformation? If Yellowstone is a hot spot and the NA plate is moving west northwest, it would seem prudent to monitor land deformation further away from the actual park.

[@usgs]

Fortunately, there are GPS stations all over the country! You can see a map of the stations and even look at the data they collect at geodesy.unr.edu/NGLStationPages/gpsnetmap/GPSNetMap.html. The specific "Network of the Americas" has the highest-quality data. Station coverage in that network is thinner east of the Rockies, but the area NE of Yellowstone is still covered (www.unavco.org/instrumentation/networks/status/nota). So if there were uplift east of the park, it would be detected. We can also monitor deformation from space using satellites and a technique called "InSAR" -- no ground-based stations needed for that!

[@caetlynrose4]

What a shame... you had a mini blue lagoon. The same high silica blue.

[@jamesdubben3687]

Does the subsidence data only go back to 2015 or is that when this period started?

[@usgs]

That's when this period of subsidence started. The first deformation data were collected in the 1920s and can be compared to the 1970s (the next time those data were collected). Since the early 1980s there are at least annual results for deformation, and from the late 1990s to early 2000s continuous GPS provides daily deformation results. From all these measurements we can see that the caldera goes up and down -- typically by about 1 inch per year, regardless of the sense of motion. Down since 2015. Up during 2014-2015. Down during 2009-2014. Up during 2004-2009. And so on. We have a video about this at kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2HcomZ6qbdoj5Y.

[@cindyrissal3628]

Am I correct in thinking Steamboat is less predictable than Old Faithful? How long a period of time between eruptions? Or does it vary considerably? I was thinking that if there was any way to know when it was gearing up to erupt, it'd be cool to be there. Must be quite a show!

[@usgs]

It varies wildly. The geyser can go decades between eruptions, and the "record" for the briefest period between eruptions is 3 days. The geyser does seem to enter periods of increased activity -- that's been the case since 2018, but the geyser eruptions have been waning since a high of 48 in 2020. Other periods of increased activity occurred in the 1960s and the early 1980s.

[@dcs4219]

Ok. Do you have a post for the laypeople explaining the stuff on the map, like seeps? I used to know that one back, uhh maybe in the 70s. No worries I will google it. But, hey just an idea!

[@usgs]

The seeps are areas where water seems to have traveled beneath the berm that separates Nuphar Lake from Porcelain Basin. So relatively cool water from the lake seeps into the basin. There's more about that in the "Caldera Chronicles" article about Nuphar Lake: www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/rising-waters-nuphar-lake-near-norris-geyser-basin.

[@philw898]

Stupid question time ..could the upper mantle collapse into magma reservoir ?

[@usgs]

Not really. At those depths, rock does not behave in a brittle way -- rather, things move like plastic. And that motion is really slow. It does move, though, and we can see it. For example, the whole area of Scandinavia is still bouncing upward by a very small amount every year as the crust and upper mantle respond to the loss of glacial ice thousands of years ago!

[@philw898]

as I get older, this stuff definitely becomes more interesting , especially after the Tonga eruption

[@philw898]

Thank you for the reply

[@philw898]

Is youtube the best place to fire questions at you? without being to annoying 😅

[@usgs]

@@philw898 We're happy to answer Yellowstone and volcano questions in whatever way you prefer. KZbin works, or you can send questions via email to [e-mail]. We also are on X, Facebook, and Instagram as "USGSVolcanoes".

[@idaniarodriguez825]

Eto lo ponen en Enghish para no enterarnos.

[@johnbennett8844]

¿Habla en serio?

[@davidbrooks1724]

I have those in my pants all the time

[@erfquake1]

USGS: how do you know what I think? It's a tired hook. Please respect your viewers.

[@cindyrissal3628]

And some of us are getting very tired of people who take everything personally & flip out. That phrase is just a way of speaking to hold the interest of the audience & to make them consider what you're saying. Take a chill pill, Karen. Nobody's picking on you...yet...😈😉