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Hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park
- jandrewrogers 2y agoFrom the US Geological Survey: "At around 10:00 AM MST on July 23, 2024, a small hydrothermal explosion occurred in Yellowstone National Park in the Biscuit Basin thermal area, about 2.1 miles (3.5 km) northwest of Old Faithful. Numerous videos of the event were recorded by visitors. The boardwalk was damaged, but there were no reports of injury. The explosion appears to have originated near Black Diamond Pool. Biscuit Basin, including the parking lot and boardwalks, are temporary closed for visitor safety. The Grand Loop road remains open. Yellowstone National Park geologists are investigating the event."
- m_a_g 2y ago> no reports of injury I feel like that’s pure luck. Things could’ve gone way worse
- willy_k 2y agoIs this a potential sign of the fault shifting or whatever the correct terminology is? A warning shot before a massive earthquake? Or just a geyser-like phenomenon?
- swatcoder 2y agoFrom https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/science/hydrothermal-explosions-yellowstone#overview https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/science/hydrother... > These very large and violent hydrothermal explosions are independent of associated volcanism. None of the large hydrothermal events of the past 16,000 years has been followed by an eruption of magma. The deeper magma system appears to be unaffected even by spectacular steam explosions and crater excavations within the overlying hydrothermal system.
- pfdietz 2y agoNote, however, that much larger hydrothermal explosions have occurred than the one that just happened. There are some large craters in Yellowstone Lake from hydrothermal explosions. These would certainly kill people who were nearby if they happened again.
- ofalkaed 2y agoIf it was a sign of something larger it probably would not be so isolated, all the geysers in the area would have gone off. I would guess this is either the formation of a new geyser or an old one which has a long duration between eruptions or just a one off.
- DaoVeles 2y agoArm chair take here. Probably means nothing. On the scale of earthquakes and larger geology, this is insignificant. Look at the White Island eruption a few years back. If you are on the island it was an awful event. But in terms of eruption scale it was so small it barely registered.
- docbarlow 2y agoSeems to have happened before - this article has a small thumbnail of an explosion at the same site a few years ago: https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/hydrothermal-explosions-yellowstone-national-park https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/hydrothermal-exp...
- mikeodds 2y agoYellowstone supervolcano eruption https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-volcano/ https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-vol... pros: - band aid on global temperatures - interested in any others commenters may know of cons: - several states getting reset - volcanic ash covering the North American bread basket - pretty long list really
- LinuxBender 2y agoI do not have links for you, but the last time I checked there was a general consensus among the majority of scientists that given the low percentage of molten lava in the upper chamber and low percentage of molten magma in the lower chamber we would have at least 10K years of low probability of a VEI 8 eruption. An eruption currently may damage part of the park from low basaltic flows and part of the park would be shut down. Should that happen it may impact the park's tourist revenue but the governor is working on diversifying the states income. The risk level of eruption was a decision making factor in my moving so close to Yellowstone.
- mikeodds 2y agoThanks, it does look a great part of the world to live in. I’ve taken liquefaction maps into account previously when finding places to live, but not had to look up magma chamber reports yet.
- SoftTalker 2y agoMy only concern is flood plains. I had 8' of water in my basement at the first house I lived in. Technically not in a flood plain but close enough to a river. Never again.
- FredPret 2y ago8 '! How high were your basement ceilings - was there any breathing room at all?
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- hnthrowaway0315 2y agoAre the tourists lucky to not get hit? Since the bridge goes through the pool maybe it could erupt right under their feet?
- kzrdude 2y agoSee the second video of the broken bridge and the rocks thrown around. Clearly someone could have been badly injured if they were there. I don't think it goes through the pool, just close to it.
- OutOfHere 2y agoIdeally we should be mining Yellowstone completely for its geothermal power, starting at its periphery, then digging inward gradually. If we don't, the only other eventual outcome is destruction of North America from its supervolcano eruption. Mining it kills two problems with one stone, the energy problem and the supervolcano problem. Of course no fracking chemicals should be used.
- notaustinpowers 2y agoNational Parks (and the ADA) are some of the few great things that America has going for it and turning Yellowstone National Park into a power plant would not be one of them.
- OutOfHere 2y agoYou are not even trying to understand. Aesthetics is not more important than existence. If Yellowstone is not mined, then when it blows, there will be no Americans left to appreciate it. Secondly, the mining stations will be limited. Yellowstone is a vast land. There is expected to be no diminishing of the forest.
- tomrod 2y agoSupervolcanoes in the area have blown many times and recovered. I was surprised to learn this from PBS Eons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ofNufZVcMU
- SoftTalker 2y agoNorway doesn't seem to have a problem with it.
- dboreham 2y agoIceland.
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- Aeroi 2y agoUsed to guide in Yellowstone. This has no bearing on the greater Yellowstone Caldera (supervolcano) which spans nearly 30miles by 40miles. In my time there I never saw anything like this. If you're ever in a situation similar to this, run as fast and as far as you can. The interesting thing about geysers and pools is how relatively predictable they are... until they are not. A mathematical and statistical person would have a lot of fun building prediction models for all the different geysers.
- 0xdde 2y ago> A mathematical and statistical person would have a lot of fun building prediction models for all the different geysers. It's so popular that one of the datasets immediately available in base R is the set of waiting times between eruptions for a Yellowstone geyser [1]. [1] https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/datasets/versions/3.6.2/topics/faithful https://www.rdocumentation.org/packages/datasets/versions/3....
- verandaguy 2y agoIn fairness, the geyser in question is Old Faithful, among the best-known geysers in the world, renowned for its regularity. I’m not sure that it’s particularly more regular than most other geysers, but that’s what is known for.
- dmckeon 2y agoBefore a 1959 earthquake, Old Faithful had a very regular cycle time - thus the name. Since then, the name has become less apt.
- adamredwoods 2y agoVery exciting time for a geologist! Once every few hundred years I'm guessing?
- bandyaboot 2y agoThey’re not that rare. The USGS statement references a few examples of similar events including one from 2009 in this same basin, one from 1989 in the Norris basin, and another (small) event in the Norris basin earlier this year.
- stouset 2y agoEvery time I see videos like this I’m astonished by how blasé onlookers are about the whole thing. I know it’s armchair quarterbacking but please don’t be like the people in the video. If the Earth is erupting in front of you: turn and run. Don’t stay there filming. Don’t gently jog while constantly checking over your shoulder. Turn. And run. I’m not saying panic. I’m not saying trample anyone in front of you. But get to a safe distance with alacrity. You have no idea if the situation will rapidly escalate, and you may only have one opportunity to put enough distance between you and the unfolding situation. Assume the worst until you know better. In this scenario, falling rocks are a concern. Superheated steam is a concern. Poisonous gases could have been a concern. Corrosive liquids could have been a concern. Lava could have been a concern. Further eruptions could have been a concern. For all of these your odds are improved with distance. In the moment you have no idea of the full extent of the dangers and in many cases by the time you realize it’s too late. That said I’m very thankful nobody was hurt in this incident.
- Murky3515 2y agoI don't understand the psychology of it either. It's like they think that appearing overly concerned about something potentially dangerous is more embarrassing than being killed by something actually dangerous. That or they have lived such safe and sheltered lives that they cannot identify real danger. I don't have any other explanation.
- secstate 2y agoYears ago there was a hurricane that made it up the New England coast. I remember a story of a father and daughter in Acadia National Park who had wandered out onto some exposed rocks (with about 40 other people) to watch these huge waves crash just below them. Eventually one wave was larger than the others and it knocked all 40 people onto their asses, while dragging the father and daughter (who were right on the edge) into the ocean. The father drowned. All I could think was how colossally dumb you had to be to assume the waves just going to sit there crashing below you. It was clearly a huge storm surge. And then how horribly tragic and preventable the outcome was. Some people, man. EDIT: Misremembered it. Three people were swept out, and it was the 7-year-old daughter who died. God damn, how awful. https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-swept-out-to-sea-at-thunder-hole/ https://www.bangordailynews.com/2009/08/23/news/three-swept-...
- racl101 2y agoI think I would've just ran and not kept looking back. Screw the chance to get a video from my phone.
- bugbuddy 2y agoYellowstone mass extinction event is exactly the curve ball no one expects for 2024.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- metadat 2y agoDirect link to the actual video (TFA "Play Button" image wasn't clickable for for me). https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z64etOuLZDQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z64etOuLZDQ
- munchler 2y agoThat's actually a slightly different video from the one in the article, which is https://www.facebook.com/1288518484/videos/465839182979896/ https://www.facebook.com/1288518484/videos/465839182979896/
- laweijfmvo 2y agothis one shows the explosion as well!
- metadat 2y agoThanks for pointing this out, else I might not have seen it! Really cool.
- pimlottc 2y agoYou can actually see the person filming the FB video you posted in the YouTube video!
- gavmor 2y agoNow let's synthesize a Gaussian splat reproduction!
- laweijfmvo 2y agowarning for the annoying screaming you're about to endure. there's not much sound for the geyser so you may as well just mute.
- CorpOverreach 2y agoIt saddens me that we've normalized the recording of vertical videos. There'll be so many more historical events caught on video... but it's now so much more likely that it'll be a vertical video. :(
- buescher 2y agoI grew up in the surrounding area. Tourists, and some locals, died every year, frequently at Yellowstone. Relevant Baudrillard quote: > Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.
- _wire_ 2y agoFantastic reference! More to enjoy... The Precession of Simulacra" by Jean Baudrillard, Translated from English into American by Sean Joseph Patrick Carney https://continentcontinent.cc/archives/issues/issue-2-2-2012/the-precession-of-simulacra-by-jean-baudrillard-translated-from-english-into-american https://continentcontinent.cc/archives/issues/issue-2-2-2012...
- buescher 2y agoIf you’ve been socialized not to really believe anything is really real, and your life is mostly spent in social modulation, physical danger that doesn’t register immediately with the hindbrain can really trip you up. I know of a scenic overlook someone falls off every couple of years, going well back before the smartphone selfie era.
- sdkdfjdlkdsj 2y ago[flagged]
- istjohn 2y agoThanks for the reminder to check out the book Death in Yellowstone. According to Randall Munroe it's quite a read.
- sharpshadow 2y agoI’ve heard that a very big explosion ontop of the Yellowstone expanding magma bubble could burst it with devastating consequences. Is something like this realistic and considered in national security?
- chx 2y agoAt least for the next 2500 presidential cycles or so the chances of the Yellowstone Supervolcano erupting is considered quite low. We have some understanding of the physics involved, there's not enough lava and magma in the chambers currently for such an eruption. Even if a previously unseen phenomenon started to rapidly fill those, rapidly on a geological scale is still measured in thousands of years. Also, similar things like "the Big One is due in the Northwest" are just sensational headlines. The Cascadia Subduction Zone indeed produces earthquakes every 3-500 years and the last one was in 1700 but that doesn't mean there's an equivalent of a hourglass. It just means there's a historical average of that. And it's the concern of FEMA to act after something like this happens, not a matter of national security. National security concern, I imagine, would involve defusing these via some military ways and defusing such events are far beyond the capability of humankind at this time.
- andrewflnr 2y agoAs explosions go, especially volcanic explosions, this was pretty tiny. Also I don't know where you're getting this idea of an "expanding magma bubble" that could "burst". There's magma chamber that is not to my knowledge changing size, and it can't really erupt at all right now. There's certainly no air inside it, unless you want to count dissolved gas in the magma.
- sharpshadow 2y agoI mean an external explosion which triggers the burst of the magma bubble. For example L. Ron Hubbard speaks about it where Xenu does this. “Hydrogen bombs were then lowered into the volcanoes and detonated simultaneously, killing all but a few…”[1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- Bluescreenbuddy 2y agoThe survival instincts of a bag of rocks.
- randomtoast 2y agoWhat is the estimated TNT equivalent of this explosion based on what we can see in this video?
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoExpert scientist here. The estimated TNT equivalent is about tree fitty
- gosub100 2y ago5 millitons
- sebastiennight 2y agoJust the letter T. lowercase t, probably
- EchoReflection 2y agoarchived version:https://web.archive.org/web/20240723212115/https://www.jhnewsandguide.com/the_hole_scroll/video-biscuit-basin-geyser-explodes-sending-yellowstone-tourists-packing/article_6862fda2-4923-11ef-b5c4-abdc9bc8cd83.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240723212115/https://www.jhnew...