Good News! We’re Not All Going to Die…Yet.
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that as of 1800 MST on 2 January 2009, seismicity of the ongoing Yellowstone earthquake swarm continues. Over 500 earthquakes, as large as M 3.9, have been recorded by an automated earthquake system since the inception of this unusual earthquake sequence that began Dec. 27, 2008. More than 300 of these events have been reviewed and evaluated by seismic analysts. Depths of the earthquakes range from ~ 1km to around 10 km. We note that the earthquakes extend northward from central Yellowstone Lake for ~10 km toward the Fishing Bridge area, with a migration of recent earthquakes toward the north. Some of the dozen M3+ earthquakes were felt in the Lake, Grant Village and Old Faithful areas. Personnel of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory continue to evaluate this earthquake sequence and will provide information to the NPS, USGS and the public as it evolves.
This earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years.
Okay, some background. The area they’re talking about is the Yellowstone Caldera, which is very seismically active. The general vicinity gets small quakes all the time, and even some pretty good-sized ones so this most recent earthquake swarm isn’t necessarily out of the ordinary.
On the other hand, the reason the area is so active is because there’s a huge amount of pent-up magma under the caldera that could erupt pretty much at any time. The Yellowstone Caldera is huge and when it does blow, the results could very well be catastrophic. We are overdue for a big one at Yellowstone.
However, there’s no real way to know whether this latest earthquake swarm is a precursor to an eruption or simply a pressure release. The caldera has been rising since at least last year and it doesn’t appear to geologists and vulcanologists that anything big is likely to happen soon. For what it’s worth, the “alert level” at Yellowstone is still green.
So don’t start buying up all the canned food and bottled water just yet.
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Category: Hey, Mr. Science Guy!, The Good Old US of A
When that Caldera blows, a third of the world's population will die within two years. It'll really suck to have most of the agriculture in the world wiped out. Starvation is ugly. But I'll be lucky, I'll have fifty feet of superheated ash on my house and just die of either suffocation, or being cooked. If I were thirty miles closer, I'd be in the pyroclastic flow. That'd be a quicker death, but I suspect it's quite painful. I think what's really amazing about it is that the largest volcanoes in the world are so big that you can't see them. Instead, you're in them. I've been to Yellowstone and Lake Taupo (New Zealand), and except for the steam coming out of the ground, you really wouldn't expect any danger. But the steam doesn't really give you an idea of the danger. At least Taupo is not expected to blow anytime soon. And Taupo last blew 1800 years ago and humanity survived. Fortunately, there were no humans within 1500 miles at the time. But it made a damn big lake out of what once was a very large mountain. A lake with the best trout fishing in the world, by the way. But Yellowstone is much, much bigger. As for Yellowstone, I'm not exactly confident that the green alert level means much. We really don't know much about what makes a caldera blow. But it means nothing to me. I'll be dead within twenty minutes no matter what planning I do. Well, unless I sheath my house in Teflon, and buy lots of oxygen and a pair of showshoes. And then can walk a thousand miles over the ash with whatever I can carry. But hey, I probably need those snowshoes, anyway.
From what I've seen, there isn't going to be a great deal of pyroclastic flow b/c the caldera is pretty much flat. But the cloud that gets blown into the higher atmosphere could play havoc with climate for a long time.
Just another sign that the universe can do us a lot of damage and there isn't very much at all we can do about it.
Interesting stuff….
When it blows, a volcano can very quickly change the geography in the neighborhood. Don't rule out lava flow just because of the current landscape.