[Geysers] Bulger's Hole

[Gordon Bower]

> Question: Do "we" know when "Bulger's Hole" made its initial appearance? 

The hole was there the evening of May 6th. I walked past Bulger on the early afternoon of May 6th and didn't see anything unusual (but my attention was turned toward Rift and animals, not Bulger.) In my mind there at least a 75% chance that I would have noticed if it had already been there in the afternoon. I've been working on the assumption that it caved in that day, probably with help from the bison that was foraging in the swampy area behind Spasmodic / across from Oval Pool at noon and operating in that general area most the weekend.
It was definitely not there two weeks prior. I was hoping, when I first reported it, that another early-season visitor would chime in with another observation, positive or negative, from the first week of May.

It didn't change in appearance, and as far as I know did not have its own water supply, for the rest of May. I had sort of given up on it turning into anything.

The "additional crack in front and to the right of it as you look at it from the boardwalk" in Stephen Eide's 17 June post to the geyser list was NOT there on Memorial Day. Perhaps Stephen can give us more details about the secondhand reports of that crack erupting a few inches high. If he has a picture of the crater in that intermediate condition, it is now a valuable record of an intermediate stage in the development of the feature.

Mary Beth's 26 June post is not clear whether the hole was just acting as a drain for water gushing in from the crack on the 24th, or whether the crack had merged into the hole and there was a general sound of gushing water semi-underground. Her 28 June post appears to be the first report of the hole itself erupting.

GRB