WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.130 --> 00:00:03.870 Old Faithful, one of the icons 2 00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:04.920 of Yellowstone National Park 3 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:07.050 and probably the most famous geyser in the world. 4 00:00:07.050 --> 00:00:08.850 But how faithful is it really? 5 00:00:08.850 --> 00:00:10.230 Well, that's the question we're gonna tackle 6 00:00:10.230 --> 00:00:12.900 on today's June 1st, 2023 update 7 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:14.730 of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. 8 00:00:14.730 --> 00:00:16.680 Now remember, if you enjoy content like this, 9 00:00:16.680 --> 00:00:18.750 please be sure to like and subscribe down below. 10 00:00:18.750 --> 00:00:21.000 We can bring you more videos in the future. 11 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:22.830 Old Faithful is actually not faithful 12 00:00:22.830 --> 00:00:24.120 in three different ways. 13 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:26.970 Today it erupts every 94 minutes, 14 00:00:26.970 --> 00:00:29.010 give or take about 10 minutes or so. 15 00:00:29.010 --> 00:00:30.930 That happens 98% of the time. 16 00:00:30.930 --> 00:00:32.550 The other 2% of the time, 17 00:00:32.550 --> 00:00:34.980 there's just 65 minutes between eruptions. 18 00:00:34.980 --> 00:00:37.380 That happens after very short duration eruptions 19 00:00:37.380 --> 00:00:40.080 almost like Old Faithful doesn't completely empty itself. 20 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:42.600 When that happens, there's a shorter time between eruptions. 21 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:43.980 So if you happen to be here 22 00:00:43.980 --> 00:00:46.500 and see a maybe an unimpressive eruption, 23 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:48.510 wait around 65 minutes or so 24 00:00:48.510 --> 00:00:50.760 and you might see a more impressive one. 25 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:53.340 Another way in which Old Faithful is not entirely faithful 26 00:00:53.340 --> 00:00:54.960 is in looking over the decades. 27 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:57.300 Now when Old Faithful was first scientifically documented 28 00:00:57.300 --> 00:01:00.412 in the 1870s, it was erupting every 60 to 70 minutes, 29 00:01:00.412 --> 00:01:03.180 but as we just discussed now, it's every 94 minutes. 30 00:01:03.180 --> 00:01:04.290 What happened? 31 00:01:04.290 --> 00:01:07.500 Up until the 1950s, that 60 to 70 minutes was maintained. 32 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:09.450 But there were a series of earthquakes 33 00:01:09.450 --> 00:01:11.610 that caused the time period to lengthen. 34 00:01:11.610 --> 00:01:15.450 The 1959 magnitude 7.3 Hebgen Lake earthquake. 35 00:01:15.450 --> 00:01:18.660 The 1975 Norris Earthquake, 6.1. 36 00:01:18.660 --> 00:01:21.090 And the 1983 Borah Peak earthquake in Idaho, 37 00:01:21.090 --> 00:01:22.380 that was a magnitude 6.9. 38 00:01:22.380 --> 00:01:25.350 After that, the Old Faithful eruption interval increased 39 00:01:25.350 --> 00:01:26.910 by almost 10 minutes. 40 00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:29.370 So that earthquake sort of changed the plumbing system 41 00:01:29.370 --> 00:01:32.040 a little bit and can cause the interval between eruptions 42 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:33.630 to lengthen or shorten. 43 00:01:33.630 --> 00:01:36.510 A third way in which Old Faithful is not entirely faithful 44 00:01:36.510 --> 00:01:38.100 is looking over centuries. 45 00:01:38.100 --> 00:01:39.900 There's actually evidence that trees were growing 46 00:01:39.900 --> 00:01:41.070 in the Old Faithful mound. 47 00:01:41.070 --> 00:01:42.900 Now clearly, nothing's growing there today, 48 00:01:42.900 --> 00:01:44.010 and for good reason. 49 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:45.600 Nothing can grow in all that hot water 50 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:47.910 so the fact that there were trees growing at one time 51 00:01:47.910 --> 00:01:49.650 means that Old Faithful must not have been erupting. 52 00:01:49.650 --> 00:01:51.630 Now, by dating those trees, 53 00:01:51.630 --> 00:01:54.810 we know that they grew from about 650 to 800 years ago. 54 00:01:54.810 --> 00:01:57.300 So there was a time period, hundreds of years ago, 55 00:01:57.300 --> 00:01:59.850 when Old Faithful must not have erupted at all. 56 00:01:59.850 --> 00:02:02.400 Now, this corresponds to a time period of great drought 57 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:04.020 in the west and southwestern U.S.. 58 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:07.320 In fact, it affected many Indigenous cultures at the time. 59 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:09.360 So it appears that during time periods of drought 60 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:11.280 when there's not much water available, 61 00:02:11.280 --> 00:02:13.200 Old Faithful might go completely dormant, 62 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:14.430 not erupting at all. 63 00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:16.980 This is actually reasonable given what we see today 64 00:02:16.980 --> 00:02:19.110 when rivers are running high and there's a lot of water, 65 00:02:19.110 --> 00:02:20.790 the interval between Old Faithful eruptions 66 00:02:20.790 --> 00:02:23.340 is a little bit shorter than if the rivers are lower 67 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:24.330 and there's not as much water, 68 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:26.070 only by a few seconds to minutes 69 00:02:26.070 --> 00:02:28.800 but water availability clearly makes a difference. 70 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:30.390 Well, that's the story of Old Faithful. 71 00:02:30.390 --> 00:02:32.610 Now let's talk about what happened during the month of May 72 00:02:32.610 --> 00:02:34.170 in terms of seismic deformation 73 00:02:34.170 --> 00:02:35.920 and geyser activity in Yellowstone. 74 00:02:37.170 --> 00:02:39.180 Well, there's been some interesting hydrothermal activity 75 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:41.850 in the area of Geyser Hill, which is near Old Faithful, 76 00:02:41.850 --> 00:02:43.290 over the past few weeks. 77 00:02:43.290 --> 00:02:45.150 There's been a general increase in the temperatures 78 00:02:45.150 --> 00:02:46.200 of the features and in fact, 79 00:02:46.200 --> 00:02:47.910 a new hydrothermal feature formed 80 00:02:47.910 --> 00:02:50.130 unfortunately right next to the boardwalk 81 00:02:50.130 --> 00:02:53.640 and it's thrown some mud and hot water onto the boardwalk. 82 00:02:53.640 --> 00:02:56.160 So the portion of the trail there has been closed 83 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:58.050 in order to ensure visitor safety. 84 00:02:58.050 --> 00:03:00.270 This is not unlike what happened in 2018 85 00:03:00.270 --> 00:03:03.840 in the exact same area when we saw increase in temperatures, 86 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:05.190 some new features formed, 87 00:03:05.190 --> 00:03:08.640 and that was the year of a rare eruption of Ear Spring. 88 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:10.830 That eruption was noteworthy because it brought decades 89 00:03:10.830 --> 00:03:13.830 of human garbage up to the surface; coins, hats, 90 00:03:13.830 --> 00:03:17.310 a cinder block, cans with pull tabs, even a baby's pacifier, 91 00:03:17.310 --> 00:03:18.900 things that had either been thrown in 92 00:03:18.900 --> 00:03:21.030 or fallen in over the years. 93 00:03:21.030 --> 00:03:23.610 This really emphasizes the dynamic nature 94 00:03:23.610 --> 00:03:25.320 of Yellowstone's hydrothermal system. 95 00:03:25.320 --> 00:03:27.210 These systems are always changing 96 00:03:27.210 --> 00:03:30.450 and so the kinds of activity that we see this year of 2018, 97 00:03:30.450 --> 00:03:32.730 that kinda thing happens all the time throughout the park. 98 00:03:32.730 --> 00:03:34.200 So we'll report on this further 99 00:03:34.200 --> 00:03:37.140 in the months to come as it evolves. 100 00:03:37.140 --> 00:03:38.940 Turning now to earthquake activity, 101 00:03:38.940 --> 00:03:40.680 we've seen background levels of activity 102 00:03:40.680 --> 00:03:42.060 throughout the month of May 103 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:46.320 when the University of Utah located 148 earthquake events. 104 00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:47.460 The largest event of the month 105 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:51.360 was a magnitude 2.8 earthquake that occurred in late May, 106 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:53.280 about halfway between the Norris Geyser Basin 107 00:03:53.280 --> 00:03:56.580 and Mammoth Hot Springs area and the area near Grizzly Lake. 108 00:03:56.580 --> 00:03:58.980 Now this has been an area of constant seismicity 109 00:03:58.980 --> 00:04:01.260 for the better part of the past year. 110 00:04:01.260 --> 00:04:03.600 During the past month, 34 earthquakes were added 111 00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:05.460 to the swarm activity in this area. 112 00:04:05.460 --> 00:04:08.490 There was also a swarm to the northeast of West Yellowstone. 113 00:04:08.490 --> 00:04:10.530 There were 28 earthquakes that occurred 114 00:04:10.530 --> 00:04:11.580 as part of this swarm. 115 00:04:11.580 --> 00:04:14.190 And there were two other swarms during the month, 116 00:04:14.190 --> 00:04:18.030 both down by West Thumb near Yellowstone Lake. 117 00:04:18.030 --> 00:04:19.680 One of these occurred on May 5th, 118 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:20.760 there were 19 events 119 00:04:20.760 --> 00:04:24.270 and then another 12 events occurred on May 29th. 120 00:04:24.270 --> 00:04:26.700 And this is pretty common activity for Yellowstone. 121 00:04:26.700 --> 00:04:29.820 This swarm activity is about 50% of all earthquakes 122 00:04:29.820 --> 00:04:31.050 that are located in the region 123 00:04:31.050 --> 00:04:32.400 over the course of a given year 124 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:34.593 so background levels of seismicity. 125 00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:37.290 Turning now to ground deformation, 126 00:04:37.290 --> 00:04:40.410 this is the last two years of vertical deformation 127 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:42.000 at the White Lake GPS station, 128 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:44.250 which is on the east side of the caldera, 129 00:04:44.250 --> 00:04:45.750 Sour Creek resurgent dome. 130 00:04:45.750 --> 00:04:48.240 Each one of these blue dots is one day of data 131 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:50.520 and downward trends indicates subsidence 132 00:04:50.520 --> 00:04:52.680 while upward trends indicate uplift. 133 00:04:52.680 --> 00:04:55.470 There is an overall trend of subsidence at this site 134 00:04:55.470 --> 00:04:58.470 as we've seen since 2015 at this particular site. 135 00:04:58.470 --> 00:05:00.840 The caldera has been overall subsiding 136 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:04.320 by a few centimeters per year, about an inch or so per year. 137 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:06.210 And that's interrupted during the summer months 138 00:05:06.210 --> 00:05:09.840 by a little bit of uplift as water from snow melt and runoff 139 00:05:09.840 --> 00:05:10.920 sort of puffs the ground up 140 00:05:10.920 --> 00:05:12.630 almost like a sponge that gets wet. 141 00:05:12.630 --> 00:05:13.860 And then after the summer months, 142 00:05:13.860 --> 00:05:15.780 we see a resumption of the subsidence. 143 00:05:15.780 --> 00:05:19.260 We might be seeing the turnaround to a little bit of uplift 144 00:05:19.260 --> 00:05:22.140 just now, and that's occurring as all of that runoff 145 00:05:22.140 --> 00:05:24.720 from a really heavy snow year starts to percolate 146 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:26.730 into these subsurface. 147 00:05:26.730 --> 00:05:29.400 We see the same sort of patterns at Old Faithful 148 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:30.870 which is on the west side of the caldera, 149 00:05:30.870 --> 00:05:32.310 in the Mallard Lake resurgent dome. 150 00:05:32.310 --> 00:05:34.020 Over the course of the last two years, 151 00:05:34.020 --> 00:05:35.520 there is an overall subsidence, 152 00:05:35.520 --> 00:05:38.910 you can see it really well here from October of 2022 153 00:05:38.910 --> 00:05:39.840 to the current times 154 00:05:39.840 --> 00:05:42.660 and we might start to be seeing that reversal now 155 00:05:42.660 --> 00:05:43.710 into the summertime, 156 00:05:43.710 --> 00:05:46.680 subsidence pause or possibly a little bit of uplift 157 00:05:46.680 --> 00:05:49.860 as that groundwater percolates into the subsurface. 158 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.590 And now looking at the Norris Geyser Basin, 159 00:05:52.590 --> 00:05:54.150 we've seen not a whole lot of change 160 00:05:54.150 --> 00:05:55.770 over the last couple of years. 161 00:05:55.770 --> 00:05:58.800 There's that summertime uplift in 2022 162 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:00.870 and then since October of 2022, 163 00:06:00.870 --> 00:06:02.430 there's been about two centimeters, 164 00:06:02.430 --> 00:06:04.680 that's less than an inch of subsidence. 165 00:06:04.680 --> 00:06:06.600 We haven't seen much in the way of other changes 166 00:06:06.600 --> 00:06:08.863 except for some snow storms during the winter 167 00:06:08.863 --> 00:06:11.820 that covered the antenna and caused these brief periods 168 00:06:11.820 --> 00:06:13.560 of artificial subsidence. 169 00:06:13.560 --> 00:06:15.063 These are all artifacts. 170 00:06:16.410 --> 00:06:18.360 Finally, turning to everyone's favorite geyser, 171 00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:20.610 Steamboat Geyser, the tallest geyser in the world 172 00:06:20.610 --> 00:06:21.990 in Norris Geyser Basin. 173 00:06:21.990 --> 00:06:25.080 We finally got the temperature sensor back online in May. 174 00:06:25.080 --> 00:06:27.570 Unfortunately, the temperature sensor itself was not working 175 00:06:27.570 --> 00:06:29.940 but that was corrected right at the end of the month 176 00:06:29.940 --> 00:06:33.270 in time to record some minor activity of the geyser. 177 00:06:33.270 --> 00:06:34.980 Now looking back at past records 178 00:06:34.980 --> 00:06:36.390 that we were able to collect recently, 179 00:06:36.390 --> 00:06:39.450 we saw that the geyser erupted on March 11th 180 00:06:39.450 --> 00:06:41.790 and it also erupted on May 7th. 181 00:06:41.790 --> 00:06:44.220 So there have been four eruptions of the geyser 182 00:06:44.220 --> 00:06:47.250 so far this year and with this sort of minor activity 183 00:06:47.250 --> 00:06:50.250 we're seeing now, it looks like the geyser is still active 184 00:06:50.250 --> 00:06:51.540 and so we can expect an eruption 185 00:06:51.540 --> 00:06:53.550 perhaps in the days and weeks to come. 186 00:06:53.550 --> 00:06:56.760 Hopefully, we'll see an eruption here coming in June. 187 00:06:56.760 --> 00:06:57.593 Well, that's it 188 00:06:57.593 --> 00:07:00.000 for the June 1st Yellowstone Volcano Observatory update. 189 00:07:00.000 --> 00:07:01.380 Please like and subscribe down below 190 00:07:01.380 --> 00:07:02.940 if you'd like to see more content like this. 191 00:07:02.940 --> 00:07:04.440 And if there are any questions you have, 192 00:07:04.440 --> 00:07:06.390 you can feel free to email us anytime. 193 00:07:06.390 --> 00:07:11.070 Our address is yvowebteam, all one word, @usgs.gov. 194 00:07:11.070 --> 00:07:13.590 We'll be back next month, so stay tuned, stay safe, 195 00:07:13.590 --> 00:07:15.510 stay healthy, and we'll see you next time. 196 00:07:15.510 --> 00:07:16.366 Bye-bye. 197 00:07:16.366 --> 00:07:19.616 (bright upbeat music)