[Geysers] Probable Link major 8 June 2009

[Gordon Bower]

This thread reminds me of an incident I did not include in my brief report of my May trip.

On Wednesday 20 May I was waiting at Oblong and keeping one eye out for an anticipated Grotto start. I watched the 1414 Grand from Oblong, and during Grand's second burst at 1423, saw a pretty big steam cloud go up behind the trees: I assumed I had missed Grotto Fountain during Grand and it was a better-than-usual Grotto start. Walking back to my bicycle a few minutes later, I was startled to see Grotto still off. At 1430, Link was still boiling hard up to one or two feet (ending 1431), and the runoff channel was fuller than usual. It looked like the stone-lined portion had been filled almost to the brim. Given that the water didn't spill over the stones into the black sandy area, and there was still a fairly goodsized area of bare sinter between Link and Culvert that hadn't washed, I just shrugged it off and wrote "Link minor 1423 d=8" in my notebook. The wash and the steam cloud were far bigger than they should have been for a normal 1990s link minor - though far smaller than the size of the 1983 Link majors.

The pictures posted on the list here today show that there was quite a bit more wash on the 8th than I saw on the 20th. (Sad to say, I did not notice whether the 'waterfall' had been bleached out already on the 20th or not. I'd like to think I would have noticed if it had already been brilliant white.) Still, it's worth mentioning that we seem to be having either some really big minors or some really small majors.

GRB

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