[Geysers] Geyser report, October 29-30

[Tara Cross]

This is a short geyser report for October 29-30, 2009.

The big news (if you can believe it) involves Depression.  This morning, Steve Eide went to check on the Hill and noted that Depression had a very strong overflow cycle, and then dropped several inches--well below the usual drop level.  He thought it was weird, but then Depression erupted at 1113.  Imagine our surprise, then, when Greg Gushwa and I were at the Beehive benches and saw Depression in full eruption *again* at 1425ns (I~3h12m).  By that time we'd finally caught on that something unusual was happening and Steve kept an eye on Depression's cycles.  The peak of the cycles ranged from essentially what an ordinary peak would be, to overflow and bubbles so strong that it looked like it was starting to erupt.  Then when it dropped the water level was 3-4 inches below the rim.  For the 3rd witnessed eruption, Steve noted that the cycles got shorter as the eruption neared, going from around 30 min to around 20.  Unfortunately I did not write down the 3rd eruption but it was right before 1800 so the interval was ~3 1/2 hours.  Eruptions  looked about the same as before, though with fewer large bursts.  We were wondering if maybe there was an earthquake to cause this?

After erupting during Fan & Mortar at 1018 on the 29th, Beehive erupted at some point overnight and then was splashing very nicely before dark on the 30th.  We bailed at 1900 with no Indicator yet.

Aurum erupted at 1224ns and 1603.  It looks like it's having 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hour intervals.

Castle, Grand, Daisy and Riverside all seemed normal today.

Fountain erupted about when expected at 0821 this morning.  Steve tried to catch the afternoon eruption but it had already gone.

I did not know until last night that no one had reported Great Fountain's wild phase to the listserv.  I asked today and was told that the wild phase started on Tuesday the 27th and the bursting action lasted about 2 days, on the 27th and 28th.  I don't know if anyone checked today to see if it was out of the intermittent cycling phase yet.  (Please realize that there are essentially only 4 of us to cover all of the geysers and some things will be inadvertently missed.)

Since Steve saw the eruption cycles on the 25th and 29th, I'll let him report the details--but to quickly summarize, the eruption on the 29th was preceded by a double River pause, Main Vent splashing (some good splashes as well as some near-constant splashing) and Bottom Vent eruptions.  So, it sounded like event cycles earlier in the season.  On the 29th, Mortar had a superlative eruption, and especially Lower Mortar.  It was one of the tallest/strongest I've seen.  Also, as Upper Mortar was starting to go into steam I looked over at East Vent and it was having a fountain-type bursting eruption from a pool in its vent.  I don't recall ever seeing that before.  The height was maybe 10-15 feet.

That's all I can think of right now.  We'll try to learn more about Depression tomorrow.

--Tara Cross
fanandmortar at hotmail.com
 		 	   		  
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