[Geysers] Fountain, etc.

[Tara Cross]

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

I've had a couple of questions about Fountain so I thought I'd write up a quick report.  In my haste to put my numbers in the logbook, I neglected to copy down info for Fountain, so this is all based on what I have in my personal logbook.

Between 7/21 and 7/31, intervals were mostly in the range of 6h30m-7h40m.  Disrupting this neat 70-minute window were several shorter intervals, one of ~5h39m and one of under 5 hours (sorry, somehow it did not end up in my book).  Durations ranged from 30-42 minutes with most in the 30-35 minute range.

All but one of the eruptions I saw came from a low pool.  The high pool eruption was on 7/22.  Rocco Paperiello reported at least one other example of a high pool eruption in July.  In both cases, Clepsydra paused briefly several times prior to Fountain's eruption and Morning's Theif had small eruptions to 6 feet or so during Fountain.

I only saw only one large eruption of Morning's Theif, on 7/24.  Fountain started at 1830ns while I was still in the parking lot.  When I arrived at Fountain, Morning's Theif was in eruption.  At 1838, Morning's Theif had a brief but powerful bursting eruption to about 40 feet.

Spasm was usually i.e. before Fountain started.  Jet's intervals had usually dropped down to 8-9 minutes before Fountain.  Lynn reported that there appeared to be no correlation between Super Frying Pan and Fountain.

I saw Old Cone erupting on 7/22, the first time I have seen it this year.

In my time waiting for Fountain, I also observed activity in the Kaleidoscope Group.  NTFL continues to have some very nice eruptions.  Since at least late June, I've been seeing a feature near Kaleidoscope erupting that I could not identify.  Rocco Paperiello believes that this feature is Fitful Geyser.  I have not timed intervals yet but based on memory of my observations, they were less than an hour.  The eruptions consisted of wide bursts to 10-15 feet.  I have seen "1B" (or Kaleidoscope's Indicator Vent) a number of times this summer but never Kaleidoscope.  Others have reported seeing Drain, but I have not seen it so far.  I finally saw an eruption of Honeycomb on 7/29 after not seeing it at any other time this year.

Deep Blue's Vent #12 is very active this year.  Based on my own observations and reports from others, it is having series every 4-6 hours.  The series begin with powerful initial eruptions that can reach as much as 50-60 feet.  As the series progresses, eruptions become weaker and further apart.  In late July, Firehose was on weakly between series of #12, sometimes so weakly that I could not tell whether it was erupting or not without using binoculars.

There has been a lot of activity in the Sprinkler Group this year, but unfortunately I am not good at identifying which feature is which.  At least two of the features were new to me, both of them in the vicinity of Angle Geyser (one may be THE Angle Geyser, according to Rocco).

--Tara Cross
fanandmortar at hotmail.com
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