[Geysers] A geyser question

[Stephen J. Eide]

Greetings and Salutations,

I did get some pictures of Improbable/PLH, some in minor eruption, some
in major eruption, and some post eruption.  I'm sending a disk with them
to the Sput.  I'll attempt to attach two of them to this e-mail.  The
first picture is from the major on 11-1-05 at 1251 and the second is
from the next major eruption on 11-1-05 at 1427.

I know I'm late writing on this but when I returned from visiting
yellowstone 10-30 to 11-3 I had to jump back into some long days at work
to make up the vacation time.

Lynn has already reported the major geyser activity I saw during my
visit.  I did catch two majors from PLH on 11-1-05 and a few other minor
geysers.

The morning of 11-1-05 I was hanging around the main hill waiting for
Beehive.  Plume was having somewhat longer intervals with eruptions at
0907, 1016, 1134, 1246, 1406, and 1513.  The Plume intervals I have from
10-31 are all in a 54-60 minute range.  I have no idea if there is any
relationship between Plume and PLH.  I saw Little Squirt i.e. at 1040,
it could not have been more than 2-3 minutes from the start.  From where
I was standing Little Squirt was right behind PLH so the steam from a
PLH minor screened it from view for a while.  Subjectively, PLH was
having minors that had more strenght or height this morning compaired to
what I watched on 10-31.  The minors were up to three feet in height.
Then the first major started at 1251.  As reported by Lynn, she timed
the duration at about two minues.  I took some pictures, they suffer
from being a little too close and the fact it was cold and steamy.  The
major ended in a steam phase and was followed by about 45 minutes of
occasional steam puffing out of PLH, sometimes sounding like Lion
roaring.  After the steam puffing quit I could hear water gurgling in
PLH.  The first visible water droplets from splashing were seen at
1412.  At 1419 I finally saw visible standing water at the bottom of the
crater, and the second major started at 1427 before PLH finished filling
(it had not reached overflow).  The duration of the second major was
about two minutes also  The maximum height of both majors was about 20
feet, however the majority of the water was only in the 10-15 foot
range.  I was likely was babbling a bit when I reported that data to
Lynn so she reported earlier that I gave the height as 15 feet.  The
error is mine, but I estimated the maximum height was 20 feet.  This was
followed by more steam puffing/roars.  Beehive indicator started at 1436
and Beehive at 1449.  I left the main hill after that in hopes of
catching Fountian.

I had no luck with Fountian but I did catch a Jelly eruption at 1642.
When I arrived Spasm was down about 3 feet and was rising.  Jelly was
full and overflowing gently.  After a few minutes Jelly rose an inch or
two with significant overflow and some boiling/splashing to about 1-2
feet for perhaps 10 seconds.  Then the pool level dropped about a foot.
Looking back in my log books, I have one other case like this this
summer and one last fall 2004.  All three Jelly eruptions started about
midway through the Fountian cycle.  All started after a period of
overflow from Jelly and while Spasm was rising but still several feet
below overflow and several minutes before the start of Spasm.  Has
anyone else noticed this behavior?  Perhaps Jelly is more active but is
not recorded because it starts in the middle of the Fountian cycle and
usually if you're in the middle of the Fountian cycle few people wait
around to be there to see it.

I timed four Botryodial eruptions on 11-2-05 and the intervals were 4
minutes 53 seconds, 4 minutes 38 seconds, and 4 mintues 38 seconds.
After that Great Fountian called.  Before the Giant eruption on 11-2 I
noticed that Solstice slipped into an on/off mode at 1326, for the next
15 minutes it would be off for 40-70 seconds, on for 10-50 seconds, then
off, then on, and so on.  Unfortunately high winds and sleet drove me in
at about 1340 so I missed the start of Giant about 45-60 minutes later.
I did catch quite a bit of the eruption, but again I missed the start.

On 11-3-05 I took more pictures of PLH/Improbable.  It appeared to have
had more major eruption(s) since 11-1-05 because a sinter arch that was
over the lower part of the crater was completely blown away and the
crater had enlarged to about 3 feet (Plume to Little Squirt axis) by 3.5
feet (Anenome to OF Inn axis).  I think I remember Tara estimated the
crater at 4 X 4.5 a day or two after this.  Also on 11-3-05 Plume was
dormant.  It was easy to tell because the snow that fell off and on all
day was building up on the sinter around Plume.  I believe the last
recorded eruption was on the afternoon of 11-2-05.

Thats about all I have that Lynn didn't report.  I hope the pictures
follow.

Stephen Eide

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