[Geysers] Geyser update 18-23 may

[Gordon Bower]

(SPUT editors: please see me for further details, if there's any news in here you want to publish next time around. I am writing a quick version from a hotel room in Cooke City...)

Report for the first half of my trip, covering 18-23 May:

Very strange weather. Lots of snow - still coming down the sides of the Madison River Canyon, burying the back rows of the Old Faithful parking lot, and knee-deep at the Kepler Cascades trailhead, but very warm dry weather for May. Almost no green grass anywhere on the 18th, but more seen every day. Almost no baby bison on the 18th either, but several seen on the 20th and more every day since. The Firehole River, which usually doesn't rise high enough to cover the "shelf" in Sawmill's runoff channel until about May 25th, had already done so by the 18th. Many areas bare of snow, however, skipped over spring and went straight to mid-summer bone-dry appearance. The need for "Vista Clearing" at the Inn as discussed on this list earlier this summer was rather exaggerated. The view from the third-floor rooms and from the balcony is nearly identical to what it was five to ten years ago.

As others have noted on the mailing list already, Hank Heasler has released a set of 47 photographs, taken by at least 3 members of his party, of the 17 May activity in the Wall Pool / Black Diamond area. Any of you who are in the park with a laptop between now and Wednesday afternoon, you may copy the set from a flash drive.

The usual suspects:

Plume was mostly very close to 1 hour in the daytime. Typically a few minutes longer in the morning and evening. On Tuesday 19th (Little Squirt day) there was one 49 and one 52. The first interval seen Friday morning was 77. I also saw an almost "blue-bubble-like" start of a Plume first burst Thursday morning. Both of these made me wonder if Plume was sleeping in the wee hours; but when Plume 'slept' several years ago, the first eruption of the morning often ran to 7 or more bursts. Every eruption I saw had 5 bursts, durations 82 to 89 seconds.

Beehive has ranged from under 11 to over 17 hours this week. Both extremes were the 18th, the day before Little Squirt.

Speaking of Little Squirt: active the 19th and the 23rd. The only thing noteworthy about Little Squirt is that the monitoring device is flamingly obvious. A freakin' boulder to hide the recorder, and a row of cobblestones pointing out exactly where the cable is. If it were at Arrowhead Spring, people would think it was a half-finished medicine wheel. As much as I love good electronic data... I'm sorry, this needs to go.

Bronze Spring's water level responded in the usual way to little squirt but Silver Spring remained out of sight every time I looked all week.

Exactly one Depression seen by anyone in the last week. 

Lion series are frequent, 2 in daylight hours most days. In principle, 80 minutes to the second eruption and 60 minutes apart after that, but the content of the series is all over the map, from 1 (seen Friday morning) to 5 majors, and remarkably often, the last major is preceded by as much as a half hour of roarlets, one or two minor eruptions, and the usual 20-30-minute post-minor delay.

Little Cub intervals 38-45 minutes, durations around 5 minutes. With one notable exception. An unusual event occurred around dinnertime on the 19th (10 hours into Little Squirt, and around the time of a Lion initial): an out-of-the-blue 64-minute interval, followed by a few more above 50. At the same time, Ear Spring was completely silent and about 3cm below overflow. (Arrowhead Spring and "Exclamation Point" Spring were also below overflow that night, and full again the next morning, but I've seen them do that before.) A heck of a strong "Nmin," if there is such a thing.

Aurum is clinging to a semblance of regularity. Shortest interval seen was 3h50m. Many 5-hour intervals and 10-hour presumed double intervals. The one time I actually sat and waited for it, it naturally waited until the sun set and I went inside at the 6-hour mark.

Castle had 3 or 4 majors between minors. If it makes it as far as 2 consecutive majors, 13 1/2 to 14 hours.

Penta erupted as I arrived in the basin Monday afternoon, but after that, exactly one Tardy cycle seen the rest of the week (I am told Penta erupted overnight once also.) Lots of "Sawmill for 1 hour every 3 hours." I caught one Uncertain Friday evening (1858, 3 minutes after a low-pool Sawmill start during a deep drain.)

Grand is giving lots of variety, from 7 hours up to almost 11. I saw one two-burst eruption and all the rest one burst. There was a 3-burst visitor report Tuesday evening, but from a distance (I watched from in front of the Inn) I saw unusually high spikes of water at the 6 1/2 and 9 minute marks but never saw a pause. Maybe I was fooled by exceptionally thick billows of steam, maybe the visitor doesn't know what a second burst is. Who knows.

West Triplet seen twice during most Grand cycles, and Rift every other day or so.

Oblong *might* be being the star performer of the season. Several closed intervals all between 4 1/2 and 5 hours early in the week... and several gaps of 9 to 10 hours between morning and evening eruptions, and I find it hard to believe that Oblong was missed by all the gazers at 1 or 2 in the afternoon on those days. There were also a couple of 13- to 14-hour overnight gaps. If only we knew for sure if those were doubles and triples... The one Oblong I saw up close was impressively large and had a total duration around 8 minutes, though the billowing steam clouds I saw from afar usually were only visible for 6 minutes.

Daisy is fun. As short as 111 minutes on a windy 19th, and many intervals in the 130-140 minute range, along with several exceeding 3 hours. No rhyme or reason to it.

Grotto wasn't seen all that much early in the week, aside from a marathon Tuesday. The Thursday-Friday observations seem like classic 1990s Grotto: 2-minute head starts for Grotto Fountain, a 44-minute Central Vents delay, and a Rocket major 2h03m into Grotto.

Riverside's short mode intervals were as short as 5h52m, and the long mode in the vicinity of 6 1/2. A couple of morning predictions were off by almost an hour, if it went long-long-long. (It also had 4 shorts in a row, with a quadruple interval just shy of 24 hours.)

Artemisia steam clouds were seen on Tuesday and Friday. The trail reopened Thursday, but no closed intervals.

I mentioned before how high the river was already on the 18th. It continued to rise, and submerged Island Geyser the afternoon of the 20th (seen not erupting at 1751.) Island was erupting again the morning of the 21st, drowned again late evening on the 21st (I saw it erupting just a short time before Lynn saw it not erupting), and erupting again on the weekend. It appears that the water just barely rose high enough to flood Island in the heat of the day and subsided at night. With hardly a drop of rain all week, it seems the river crept a little lower by the 23rd. 

In the Lower Basin, occasional Great Fountain steam clouds were seen (as of mid-afternoon Saturday, the road was open, but GF hadn't been seen up close yet) but no closed intervals. Fountain was seen 3 times in 3 days, 14 and 26 hours apart; if we're lucky that means steady 7-hour intervals.

Literally hundreds of people per day ignored the bear closure signs at Midway and Fountain, greatly irking those of us who felt obliged to follow the roolz. NPS staff hinted off the record that a conscious decision had been made to make no attempt to enforce it. On the other hand, I did get to see law enforcement intercept a party walking out to Overhanging Geyser this afternoon.

The obscure and overlooked:

Sponge is erupting very weakly, but very regularly, averaging 95-second cycles. Model is active. Lots of runoff from Pump is coming down to the Boardwalk area. Plate looked bone-dry most the week, but from a distance I saw steam in the right place twice on Thursday, and Friday night there was standing water several inches down in the vent.

Solitary is remarkably regular at 5-minute cycles. Rather than letting the size of the eruptions control the intervals, its strong eruptions have shorter durations than its weak eruptions. I don't recall any other geyser I have seen with that habit.

Tilt is taking LOTS of water from Crested Pool, and I assumed it was flooded too much to erupt. I was told mid-week that people had seen it pulsating but not erupting... and was surprised, Friday at 1722, to see the most powerful eruption of Tilt I had ever seen. At its peak, the water rose well above my head as I stood on the boardwalk, and droplets landed in the loose gravel beyond the far side of Tilt's runoff channel. A very long 3m15s duration (compared to the standard 2 minutes of years past.)

UNNG-RSG-1 is erupting every 12-15 seconds, for about 6 seconds each time.

Link is having minors big enough to put up enough steam to cause me to hustle down from Oblong and see what was happening; enough runoff to fill the stone channel almost to the brim, but not quite spill over it into the loose gravel.

I visited Dilapidated Geyser. It does appear to have swept its runoff channels clear sometime moderately recently. The western vent has new golden beaded sinter, and is acting as a boiling intermittent spring, overflowing for 2 minutes. The one full cycle I observed took about 20 minutes. The beading in the main vent looks healthier than I remember it being several years ago. A marker I placed Wednesday morning did not move in 48 hours, however.

Little Brother was active all week. 5-second durations and 35-second intervals, each time I took a minute or two to time a couple.

No surprises from Cliff, with majors every 35-40 minutes. I saw one eruption from the UNNG behind Green Spring. The one duration I got on Spouter was about 4 hours. No surprises from Jewel, 7-9 minutes. A bit of a surprise from Shell Spring, which was completely empty the evening of the 21st. I am accustomed to seeing it boiling down in the mouth of the vent even at the low point of its cycle.

In the Lower Basin on Opening Day (May 23rd): Botryoidal is active; intervals 3m25s-4m55s averaging 4m15s, durations 18-28s averaging 24s. A-0 is stable at 26 minutes, and continues to insist on always starting its eruptions late in Botryoidal's interval rather than ever starting just after Botryoidal. Logbridge is active: one closed interval of 36 minutes. 

I walked to Pocket Basin. It was dry enough to be July in the northern part of the River Group with only one patch of mud between the bridge and Pocket Geyser. Azure Spring is pouring out tons of water as an intermittent spring. UNNG-RVG-4 (the vaguely goggles-shaped pair of vents) was filling and sometimes just boiling, sometimes splashing up to 2 feet for a few seconds, once a minute. Another low symmetric cone a short distance toward the river also looks like it has erupted recently, with loose geyserite swept clean of its sides. Three eruptions of Mound Geyser were still about 20 minutes apart. I have serious doubts that Pocket Geyser is erupting at all; the orange bacteria extends up the runoff channel right to the outer lip of the crater. While I watched, it acted as an intermittent spring, full with flickering steam bubbles in the throat of the vent for a minute and a half, just below overflow for a minute and a half.

The three lower groups of mud pots have already reached late-summer dryness; some are hissing, some were spitting specks of mud several feet in the air. Among the upper mud pots, the first big pit is a watery lake, but the others are starting the thicken and spatter, though none of the really exciting "blobs 20 feet in the air" stuff is happening yet.

At West Thumb today (23rd): 

Water levels in the upper area are as low as I have ever seen. Only Perforated Spring is overflowing. Twin is well below overflow. Black Pool is very hot but Abyss has bacteria growing all the way down its sides. The lake was exactly even with Lakeshore's upper vent (which was overflowing slightly.) I saw two steam clouds from Occasional, 1604IE and 1624IE, but no water. Lone Pine was empty and dry at 1625. The ice on the lake has cracked and pressure ridges have formed, but it still looks to be several inches thick and several days away from thinking about melting. 

At Norris on Thursday (21st):

Lots of interesting changes, as always - but almost no eruptions to report. Porcelain Basin:

The highlight, for me, was the Carnegie drill site. It is jetting water from the top of the rocks at a steep angle, regularly to 3 feet or so and sometimes more. It looks for all the world like a giant's drinking fountain. Something very unnatural about the way that stream of water leaves the ground. The Porcelain Terrace was as quiet as I've ever seen it. Only two features -- I'd call them Iris and Feisty, but as likely as not they are new vents in the vicinity of those old ones -- sputtering on the flats. Runoff still flowing into Pinwheel and submerging Splutter pot.

I didn't see Constant erupt in the time it took to walk all the way around Porcelain. It still looks bacteria-free and like it could be erupting. It was quietly overflowing into Little Whirligig, which is pulsating but not hot enough to kill bacteria even inside the vent. Big Whirligig is still hot, but clearly is dormant: the "Irish Flag" is no more. For those who never paid too much attention... the runoff channel between the boardwalk and Whirligig had, for all of the late 80s and 1990s, three broad stripes, green, white, and orange. The orange is iron oxide from Whirligig's more-or-less-neutral water; the green is Cyanidium algae growing in the cool acidic water that comes from the Terrace via Pinwheel. In between was a brilliant white stripe about six feet across, where boiling water from Whirligig killed the algae (Cyanidium dies above 50C, if I recall) when it erupted, and the acid dissolved all the iron when when Whirligig finished. This whole area has now turned green, except for a reduced-width strip of iron on the far right edge.

Elsewhere in Porcelain, Arsenic boiled and surged but didn't quite achieve what I'd call an eruption; Guardian is at least as powerful of a fumarole as the Black Growler; Ledge's fingers are spouting a few feet high, the thumb is still a bacteria-choked green swamp. You can't even tell it used to be a deep hole.

It is hard to see where the trail to Ebony and Bear Den used to go, and hard to even see where Ebony and Bear Den ARE thanks to the new trees that have grown below them. It's quite a contrast how the Back Basin trails have expanded and once again go back to Black Hermit Caldron while the Porcelain trails have shrunk, shrunk, shrunk, my whole life.

In the Back Basin, there was a team collecting water samples from Monarch to look for thermophiles, with NPS escort. No water in Forgotten Fumarole, Palpitator was almost full but not palpitating, Rubble and Dogs Leg were bone dry (Corporal was full), Veteran was sloshing around gently, Vixen was nearly silent (no water, hardly any steam, very few deep gurgles). The new two-vented geyser across the boardwalk from and forming a triangle with Porkchop and Pearl was doing nicely, hitting at least 5 feet and surrounded by bright white and gold sinter. Reminds me of Bastille Geyser the very first year it was active... the hole on the back side of Porkchop was acting as an intermittent spring. Pearl was overflowing slightly but not bubbling. Mystic Spring was intermittent (runoff channel wet, water down about a foot), no evidence of any big eruptions. Echinus quietly overflowing. Cistern Spring was juuust barely putting a trickle of water over one side. 90% of the terraces are dry and bleached. Steamboat was having very big impressive minors. Many were concerted but almost all were angled, not vertical. I didn't stay to keep detailed notes. 

In summary, at Norris, Steamboat is the largest active geyser, and Carnegie and the UNNG near Porkchop are tied for second. Heh.





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