[Geysers] Geyser Report: GIANT, October 11 @ 1515

[Tara Cross]

A message from Tara Cross <fanandmortar at hotmail.com>

Here are the events that took place in the Giant/Grotto area since my last 
geyser report:

October 9

~0815 Grotto marathon ended, d~25.5 hours
1030 Giant hot period, d=9m40s; India mostly covered, Mastiff to 2-3 feet, 
pretty good restart
~1440 Bathtub
1757 Giant hot period, d=9m10s; India covered, Mastiff 1-3 feet, no restart

(This in contrast to the behavior seen in the week previous, with hot 
periods occurring on a regular basis every 1.5-4 hours)

October 10

There was a bathtub in the 0700 hour, sorry I did not write down the time.  
By 1000 there were huge snowflakes falling, so Kitt headed out of the park.  
Graham had left earlier in the morning.  I was holed up in the Inn trying to 
turn in a homework assignment.  So no one was out in the basin until about 
1520 when I went out to check on Giant.  It was difficult to deduce anything 
because the platform was wet due to steady rain for much of the day, but 
there was evidence of a strong hot period around 1300-1400.  There was 
either a strong pause or a bathtub around 1700, as I observed Bijou to be on 
very strong from Grand.  Then there was a hot period at 1846, the only one 
actually observed all day.  It lasted 4m25s, Mastiff drooled a bit but 
Feather Satellite never came on.

Grotto had its first eruption overnight, either ~2030 or ~0230 (first 
observed eruption was 0828ns).  Then it followed at 1345ie and 1917.

October 11

~1000 sizeable Giant hot period.  When I checked Giant at 1030, there was 
still water on the platform and the puddles in front of the Southwest Vents 
were full.  India had a small oval dry patch on it.
1245 Strong Bijou pause ("footbath"--I could not see the water level but I 
did see water boiling in Mastiff)
1257 Grotto Fountain
1300 Grotto start, either the 7th or 8th eruption since the last marathon

After the "footbath," Bijou paused very regularly every 14-15 minutes, 
staying strong between pauses.  I was up on the railing for each pause and 
never saw water in Mastiff.  Dave Goldberg joined me in the cage at around 
1400.

~1500 Bijou pause
1504.45 Southwest Vents on, followed seconds later by Feather
1505.05 Feather Satellite on

Mastiff boiled 1-3 feet during the first 4 minutes, putting out enough 
overflow to cover about 1/3 of India.  Then it went flat for about a minute 
but continued to overflow.  Then around 5 1/2 minutes in, it began surging 
to 1-3 feet.  These surges were as wide as they were tall and the overflow 
began to pour off of the platform as surging grew to 4 feet.  As seen in the 
hot period before the 8/2 eruption, the water in Mastiff was convex over the 
vent.  Then there was a surge to 6 feet, down to 6 inches, back to 6 feet, 
down again.  On the third surge to 6 feet, I thought for a brief moment that 
Mastiff might be taking off because it was again as wide as it was tall.  By 
this time, India was under nearly an inch of water.  Cave was boiling to 4-6 
inches.  At this point it finally dawned on me that it might be a good idea 
to get out my "superduper" video camera and start taping.  Unfortunately, I 
didn't have it out in time to get the fourth huge surge from Mastiff before 
it dropped quite suddenly a little before the 9-minute mark, with Bijou 
starting up almost instantaneously.  Feather weakened briefly after this, 
but then came back along with Posthole to about 1 foot.  Giant then began to 
have vertical surging in its cone.  There was a brief moment when I thought 
Feather Satellite might be dying down, but very soon I was ignoring it 
because water was dumping out of Giant's cone.  Vertical surging continued 
and built very quickly into massive, cone-filling surges.  At 1514, there 
was an enormous surge to twice the height of the cone, followed about 10 
seconds later by the start of the eruption at 1515.

The wind direction was a bit odd--at first, it looked like the right-hand 
side of the boardwalk platform was going to get inundated (much to the 
distress of several visitors standing there), but the wind carried the water 
a bit towards Oblong, so it actually fell on the main boardwalk.  My 
impression of the start, as viewed from the left-hand side of the cage, was 
a massive, crashing sheet of water over 50 feet wide, height indeterminable. 
  Andrew Hafner, who saw the start from Castle, said it looked like "a good 
Grand, about 170 feet."

The duration of the eruption was 90 minutes; the interval was 14 days, 16 
hours, 40 minutes.  Grotto was still i.e. when I left the area, so this 
eruption once again occurred 2 hours 15 minutes into a marathon.  By the 
way, Turtle did nothing visible during or after the hot period.  
Solstice/New/Not New/Gnu/Whatever did not stop unless it stopped briefly 
within the first 5 minutes of the eruption.  It was going strong when I 
could finally see it after the curtain of water and steam dissipated.

The forecast for today was for "partly cloudy."  That forecast was 
accurate--part of the day was cloudy.  But at about 1130, the clouds burned 
off and it turned into a beautiful day with just a few puffy clouds in an 
otherwise perfectly blue sky.  There were lovely rainbows as the eruption 
progressed.

I promise I will write a geyser report covering other geysers soon.

--Tara Cross
fanandmortar at hotmail.com

_________________________________________________________________
Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and 
more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx