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

Tue Oct 12 13:15:16 PDT 2004

Yeah!  Great karma down at Giant, eh!  What a pleasure it was to read your 
post.  I felt like I was there because your description was so easy to 
picture.  Thanks!

me, cdb

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tara Cross" <fanandmortar at hotmail.com>
To: <geysers at wwc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 1:52 AM
Subject: [Geysers] Geyser Report: GIANT, October 11 @ 1515

>
> 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
>
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