[Geysers] Geyser report, July 14-30

[Tara Cross]

The following is a report on geyser activity I observed, July 14-30, 2008.  It's a little fragmented because I spent time in certain areas more than others, but since very few geyser reports were posted during that time I hope that this will provide some useful information.

Bronze Spring was active on the morning of July 20; eruptions occurred at 0713, 0723, and 0738, and there were probably more.  Eruptions consisted of 2-3 bursts ranging from 1-4 feet high.  The water was murky.

Plume seemed pretty normal throughout my visit, though there was one observed 3-burst eruption; I forgot to write down the date.

Beehive continued its pattern of moving earlier in the day until it reached early morning, when there would be an overnight eruption followed by a late afternoon eruption; however, there was enough variance in the pattern to keep us guessing, including several intervals over 24 hours.  Here are the known eruptions for July 15-30:

7/15 @ 0955, Ind 0938
7/16 @ 0816, Ind 0803
7/17 @ 0545, Ind 0533
(overnight eruption between 7/17 @ 2300 and 7/18 @ 0430)
7/18 @ 1548, Ind 1538ie
7/19 @ 1207, Ind 1152
7/20 @ 1116, Ind 1104
7/21 @ 1157, Ind 1141
7/22 @ 1010, Ind 0954
7/23 @ 0923, Ind 0909
7/24 @ 0949, Ind 0933
7/25 @ 1003, Ind 0948
7/26 @ 0732, Ind 0716
(overnight eruption, Beehive was dead @ 0500)
7/27 @ 1627wc, Ind 1623ie wc
7/28 @ 1258, Ind 1244
7/29 @ 1102, Ind 1047
7/30 @ 0642, Ind 0630ns

I saw plenty of bubbles in Depression, but it could bubble for many hours without erupting.  It continued to have long intervals and I never even saw it from afar.

Aurum's summer mode was in full swing; intervals varied from 5 hours to over 14.  Good luck.

Plate erupted on the evening of July 24; Ralph Taylor reported that it was having pairs of eruptions separated by days of inactivity.

Tilt's Baby was active and called several times, but I never heard of anyone getting a closed interval on it.

The Sawmill Group was having frequent deep drains, and Uncertain was seen almost daily; there was at least one dual with Sawmill.   Penta finally managed to erupt at 1447ie on July 29.

I reported earlier that Grand had a 4-burst eruption on July 27.  We were therefore surprised when it had another on July 29.  The only person at that eruption was Chris from Maryland because it was at 0516, but maybe there is hope that we'll start seeing more bursts from Grand.  The Sputniks continued to have occasional eruptions in association with the start of West Triplet.  Rift continued to delay Grand when it erupted during the window.  I did not do any deep analysis but when West Triplet erupted without Rift, the delay was not nearly as significant; Rift usually pushed Grand to the end or out of its window, which on July16 was lengthened and pushed back to 6 3/4 to 10 3/4 hours.  I know of at least 3 Vent delays between July 27 and July 30; I don't remember any before the 27th.

In keeping with recent behavior, Oblong's intervals were all over the place.  The shortest interval I was aware of was on July 22-23, when Oblong erupted at 2111ie and again at 0026ie for an interval of just over 3 hours.  Other intervals covered the range from 4 1/2 to over 10 hours.  People had been reporting large eruptions of Oblong, and I did see several impressive eruptions from Grand, but the one I saw up close was nothing to write home about and some eruptions were downright weak, so eruption strength was highly variable.

Rich Glasser invested a considerable amount of time at Oblong trying to decipher its overflow cycles.  At times Oblong was having pairs of overflows separated by intervals of approximately 30 minutes; if Oblong was to erupt, it would do so on the second peak rather than the first, and at least once there was a third peak that led to an eruption.  Rich was able to predict several eruptions based on a progression of stronger overflows, but it was not always a reliable indicator.

No change at Giant; Bijou continues to erupt constantly except when it is shut off by Grotto marathons and there is still powerful depth charging in Mastiff's front vent along with strong surges to up to 5-8 feet in the back vent.  Paul reported that the water level in the GIP was rising and falling, so some sort of cycle is occurring in Mastiff.

The big news at Grotto is that Grotto Fountain appears to be dormant.  In June, many Grotto eruptions were reported with no preceding Grotto Fountain, but it was still erupting occasionally; during my trip, which lasted from July 14-30, I did not see it or hear any report of it.  By the end of my trip, it wasn't even coming up and boiling near the start of Grotto.  The formation looked dry and dead.  Let's hope for the return of one of the park's prettiest geysers sooner than later.

Many gazers were enjoying how easy it was to see Daisy; most intervals were very close to 2 hours.  The shortest I remember was about 104 minutes, which got Paul Strasser interested in looking at Splendid.  So far nothing of great significance has happened there, but he did see a few variations in behavior that might prove interesting.

I've already reported on the specifics of the Fan & Mortar eruptions I saw, but I want to give a quick rundown of some of the trends in minor activity.  Whenever I spent a long stretch of time watching cycles, it seemed that the complex experienced larger cycles between short, weak garbage cycles and longer cycles with better water levels.   These longer cycles were 2-4 hours long.  The garbage cycles were usually 5-25 minutes long, with River and Gold starting simultaneously with lousy water levels and Angle blurping on and off without regard to River's cycle.  The stronger cycles could include over 40 minutes of River on, with good water levels, activity by "Gold 2," and sometimes Frying Pan and Back Vents at the end, and occasional huffs from Upper Mortar around the time River shut off.  The overall cycle lengths for the strong cycles was 50-70 minutes.

>From what I saw, Fan & Mortar did not "need" to be doing anything in particular in order for an event cycle to occur; Main Vent could start splashing during a longer off period after a stronger cycle, or it could take over the energy after extended constant activity from Angle during garbage mode.  During the July 18 and July 22 intervals, I thought I was seeing a bit of a progression in the strength of event cycles, but on July 26 there were no real event cycles seen all day until the actual eruption cycle.  On July 28 people were excited about a strong event cycle that included some good water levels in the minor vents after a River pause.  Unfortunately, we had no basis for comparison because F&M were not being watched at that stage in the interval during previous intervals, so I don't know how significant that activity was; F&M's eventual eruption was well over 24 hours later and fell within the established 3-6 day window.

So far I have not detected a strong pattern in the event cycles that have led to eruptions; for every trend, there was at least one major exception.  I do feel that behavior was stabilizing over the time that I was watching it, so more regular patterns might establish themselves as the activity progresses.  The event cycle on July 26 was as close to the "good old days" in fall 2001 and summer 2002 as I have seen since then (minus the Lower Mortar minors, of course).  The pause lengths (14 and 24 minutes) and the 55 minutes of Main Vent splashing were the most I know of so far this summer.  It will be interesting to see if F&M can keep up the regular intervals and consistent pre-eruptive behavior.

This has not been an easy year for Artemisia watchers.  Intervals ranged from 14 to over 24 hours during my stay and it seemed to be having its usual reaction to windy days with longer intervals.  According to Dean Lohrenz the durations were also all over the place, ranging from 17 to 31 minutes.

Lynn was keeping track of Atomizer and I'm sure that we'll get a report on it; I was able to see several Atomizer majors thanks to Lynn's predictions, but unfortunately I did not keep a careful log of the ones I did not see.

I meant to mention in my June report that there appears to be a spring in the Myriad Group that is either overflowing a lot more or has changed its runoff channel so that there was runoff flowing down the service road between the Lower Ham Store and gas station.  From the road it was difficult to tell exactly where the runoff was coming from.

Lower Geyser Basin:

I didn't take specific data, but Botryoidal was erupting about every 4 minutes and A-0 remained active as I have seen it in the past.  Someone had gotten a 45 minute interval on Logbridge back in June, but I did not see it in 55 minutes of observation on July 27, so it is either having longer intervals or more variable intervals.  I didn't notice anything unusual in a quick trip into the White Creek area.

I have written a separate report on the activity of Fountain.  In the cumulative 24 hours I spent waiting for and watching Fountain, I saw very little activity in the Kaleidoscope Group.  I saw occasional eruptions from New Thing Far Left, but I did not time any intervals.  Honey's Vent was active, but I never saw anything from Honeycomb.  When I looked at Deep Blue through binoculars, I could see small vents on the far right and far left that were erupting to maybe 4-6 feet, but that was all.  Firehose was not even erupting normally; I think it may have been erupting from the side vent only.  I saw nothing from Drain, 1B, Collapse, or Kaleidoscope.  There were a number of vents active in the Sprinkler Group, but I am not familiar enough with the features to know what was what.

I visited the River Group twice, on July 15 and 24.  On the 15th, Dark Pool had intervals of 22, 23, and 22 minutes.  On the 24th I got only one closed interval of 36 minutes.  Eruptions were 2-4 feet tall with about 3 bursts each.  Brain Geyser was dormant.  I can't remember if it was reported earlier, but Spectrum Spring has almost completely drained; there was water deep within a few of its vents and that was all.  The unnamed geyser south of Spectrum Spring was also completely inactive.  A two-vented spring about halfway between Spectrum Spring and Armored Spring had some sort of explosion/eruption prior to July 15; there was significant wash and dead grass around it.  By July 24, the grass was starting to recover, so it appeared that nothing further had happened there.

Other stuff:

I hope that Jeff Cross will have more detailed reports on his backcountry trips, but very briefly:  At Heart Lake, Glade is active and Jeff saw it erupt.  Rustic and Composite were having interesting alternating behavior.  At Shoshone, Bead Geyser is dormant, confirming a report from October 2007 that Bead was not seen in 6 hours of observation.  This appeared to be part of a slowing in the entire North Group, as Knobby, "Slosh," and Lion were all flooded.  However, Velvet and "The Hydra" were both active.


--Tara Cross
fanandmortar at hotmail.com




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