[Geysers] Geyser report 6-8 May

[Gordon Bower]

Three days in the park this trip, May 6-8.

Non-geyser news: the snow hasn't melted as fast as I thought it would the past two weeks. Still not much green grass for the bison, still deep snowbanks under all the trees, Friday there were still several patches of snow to navigate on the boardwalks. By Sunday, several of these had shrunk in size enough to walk single-file on bare trail alongside the snow; only a short stretch between Grotto and Giant, plus of course the wooded area between Lion and Sawmill, was still completely snow-covered. There are several new baby bison this week. Also saw two coyotes and a handful of elk. Didn't even hear the word "bear" all 3 days. Presumably that means that the ones frequenting Old Faithful in April have moved on. 
Nevertheless, the trail from Biscuit to Artemisia has been posted as a temporary bear closure, dated the end of April. I don't know why or for how much longer. (Oddly, no such posting at Morning Glory Pool; I guess they figure there is enough snow on the trail that nobody will attempt it from that end.) Equally oddly, the Mallard Creek trail is NOT posted as a bear closure though everything else (Rabbit Creek, Mary Mountain, etc) is closed as usual until Memorial Day.
Cool (40 in the morning, high 40s in afternoon) and rainy all weekend, but the wind didn't howl nonstop, and very little snow. To be honest the 38-degree rain all day in Idaho Falls today was worse than any park weather last weekend.
Gas is cheaper in the park ($3.89) than in West ($3.93) though still more expensive than anywhere in Idaho.

I have discovered the convenience of checking the webcam chat page on my phone each time I come into the basin. It saves a lot of 10-minute side trips to the visitor center and back down to the lower store parking lot. The downside of that is that my times only make it into the logbook once or twice per trip rather than daily...

The big geyser news of the week of course was Giantess. It did not revert to wide bursts of water; all of the activity during daytime on the 8th was forceful steam with entrained water. The best activity after daylight looked as big as a Lion initial and still sounded louder than Beehive. More often just roaring with a tiny sprinkle of water fallout. The last time I saw anything big and loud was about 1450; halfhearted jetting to about 1700. A solid 20 minutes of nothing while I watched the evening Beehive. (We can't be 100% sure that 17 1/2 hours is the duration - at least in water phase eruptions, sometimes it restarts after a solid hour of quiet.) In terms of effects on the rest of the Hill, not much. There was no ripping up of algae beds, nothing washed into Marmot Cave or Copper Kettle or Bronze Spring, no evidence that the dry channels leading toward the Scissors Springs area got any significant use. The only rearrangement of gravel was between Teakettle and Pump, which must have been on the downwide side at the height of the eruption at night. Some of the plants living in Topaz Spring's crater were buried alive by washed-in sediment.
Effects on the rest of the hill: Dome was active at sunup. Initial wasn't seen, but they were still strong and frequent so I would guess Dome started some hours after Giantess did. The gravel around Vault looked almost untouched when I first saw it - based on the early-morning webcam comments I thought perhaps the initial had not yet happened - but the 0900 eruption was not an initial, with a very low water level and very little water discharge. Lots of noise and steam and a few spikes shot diagonally toward the boardwalk hitting 10 to 15 feet midway through the eruption. From the lack of wash I gather the initial was probably nothing spectacular.
Infant looked the most exciting I've ever seen it. Really. Full to the brim with superheated chocolate-brown water, boiling up to 1 or 2 feet every 1 or 2 minutes, oozing into the gravel but not discharging enough water to cut a new runoff channel. By early afternoon it was still erupting but had dropped back to a fraction of an inch below overflow. As Rita at the Visitor Center put it, "Infant is a toddler!"
Bronze Spring was overflowing on its own with a few gas bubbles, but not erupting. Copper Kettle overflowed for the first time I've seen it overflow in a long time. Plate was perfectly calm but overflowing every time I looked at it on the 8th; Model (active as normal on the 7th) was also calm and overflowing on the 8th (the same thing I've seen it do the first day after Giantess in the past.) Business as usual from Sponge, Aurum, Little Cub, Depression, Plume. 
Lion tried hard to start on several occasions on the 8th as early as 1000 but did not succeed in starting before nightfall. My thoughts went back to 1998 when Lion didn't erupt for 4 days after the Giantess that reactivated Cascade; but it's quite possible that Lion had a normal series after dark on the 7th. Something to look at when Ralph's next data download happens.
Everyone including me is operating under the assumption that Giantess induced one short Beehive interval - very short, around 0300, if it did, since Beehive was already having small mid-cycle splashes by 0840. Like Lion it continued to splash all day, without actually having any big surges until 1751, just before the Indicator started at 1753. Again, when Ralph's data comes in we need to check an see if that nighttime eruption actually happened.

I have to rant a little bit about being very careful with the quality of our data. The new crop of rangers are generally enthusiastic about the geysers, love getting data from us, and if anything are a little too trusting of us when it comes to believing what they hear or mishear. When I stopped by the visitor center the morning of the 9th (having read Graham's tentative 2330 start time online, and seen a non-initial Vault already), the logbook said "Giantess 0557." I questioned the counter staff as to where that time came from and how sure we were it was the actual start time. "That's what the webcam operator said on the phone," they said, and at my semi-insistence they phoned Carolyn back and confirmed that they had misheard her, that it was in fact an IE time from the cam, not a start time.
During this phone call a pair of Inn guests had walked up to the counter and started asking questions about the loud noise that made their floor shake around 0015. The ranger called out to me saying "hey, I think we have a start time for Giantess", and asked them all the right questions about where the noise was coming from to confirm it was from the Hill and not from Castle (Castle was expected between 2330 and 0000,) and told them how Giantess was powerful enough to show up on seismographs. I said that, yes, that sounded like a Giantess eruption, and yes, that was a plausible time, explaining that the transition to steam phase an hour or so into the eruption was the loudest part (45 minutes after the preliminary seismograph indication of 2330.) The book was still in my hands -- I had just put "IE" after the "0557" -- and I wrote "0015IE VR steam phase" or something very close to that in the book. (I did not write Giantess 2330 on the May 7th page of the book, leaving that to await confirmation from someone who had actually seen the seismic data firsthand.)
Now, yesterday on this list "0015 NS VR" was reported. I presume Jim was repeating what he either saw in the logbook or was told by the rangers. It's easy to assume that the loudest part of the eruption is the part that shows up on the seismograph, and leap to the confusion that 0015 must have been near start. 
I will check next weekend, once the dust settles, and see what version ultimately was put in the book.

No time like the present to remind everyone to be careful when they set and look at their watches, too. Two weeks ago there were three of us in the basin, and our watches were all different. One was a minute ahead of mine, one was a minute behind. This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to be approached in the basin by a ~cough~ uniformed individual to ask me if I had the start time for a Daisy eruption. "Yes, 0951," I said... and got the less pleasant reply, "oh, I already radioed in 0950IE" - from someone whose bicycle I had seen emerge from the trees by Grotto at about 0952:10.  I also noticed a number of off-by-5 errors in the logbook -- I gather one of the roving rangers must be wearing an analog watch.

Returning to geyser news... Indicators on the 6th and 7th were 9 and at least 16 minutes respectively. Little Squirt was active the morning of the 6th, stopped midday for 3 or 4 hours, and resumed in the evening; the Beehive on the 6th was a bit 'early' as might be expected on Little Squirt day. Silver Spring boiled up high enough for water to be visible a few times on the 6th. Once upon a time that was semi-common on Little Squirt day but I havent seen it in a while. Plume was a bit erratic, 55 to 65 minutes Friday, 50 to 56 on Saturday, everything from 53 to 68 jumbled together on Sunday during Giantess. Aurum reliably 3 to 4 hours.

Castle was exceedingly cooperative and predictable, all majors, all 13 1/2 to 14 hours apart, a few nice splashes a few minutes before starting so it got your attention first. Tilt is still receiving lots of Crested Pool runoff and I didn't catch it even palpitating let alone erupting. 
Lots of variety in the Sawmill group. Several one-hour Sawmills on both the 6th and 7th, with Tardy and friends active overnight/morning of 7th and all day on the 8th. Churn continues to reliably start a series just after Spasmodic drops, every Tardy cycle I saw. (I would say 'at the end of Tardy' but Tardy has been seen to continue through the whole Churn cycle and into Spasmodic's refill.) I have STILL not seen Penta with my own eyes, but every time I showed up for Churn there was fresh runoff in the channel, and every time I was around for a Tardy or Sawmill start, the main vent was boiling up and spilling water out of the cone Aurum-style even while the side vents were less than half full.
Old Tardy has also had a lot of very tall and spiky eruptions lasting several minutes, nearly impossible to distinguish from Penta from the Old Faithful/Inn/webcam area. More than once I tentatively wrote Penta in my notebook only to change it after I looked again from gap in the trees between the gas station and Castle. I do believe Penta is erupting very often -- but I do not believe every webcam report is really Penta.

A new hole has opened up between Bulger and the trail. Looks to be a collapse feature, about 2 by 3 feet across. It has exposed a cross-section of 2 or 3 inches of gravel, about 6 inches of horizontal sinter layers, then open space back towards Bulger, chunks of the caved-in roof still visible on the bottom of the hole. (Not measured, estimated from the trail.) It steams gently and continuously; doesn't appear to do anything when Bulger erupts. A trickle of water from Bulger majors makes its way through the loose gravel in the splash basin and drips down into the hole. I first saw it Friday evening. I walked past it at noon Friday and didn't notice it, but can't positively swear that it happened on Friday afternoon. Perhaps another gazer, or the rangers on daily rove, can pin down for sure when it happened.

Grand had several 8- to 9-hour intervals without Rift, and had a 10h10m interval on Saturday with Rift. Small sample size, yes. (And Grand did have an 8-hour interval with Rift on my April visit.) No closed intervals on Oblong; only one steam cloud seen in 3 days. Full and overflowing every time I walked past. Inkwell Spring is the quietest I've ever seen it, barely even bubbling. Grotto had a marathon on Friday, shorts Saturday evening and Sunday morning, and looked to be in another marathon Sunday afternoon. Riverside crept earlier every day (5h48m average for 9 intervals; the one closed interval was 5h47m.) Visitor center is predicting based on 6h10m, perhaps a necessary evil if they want the odd long interval to still be "within 30 minutes," but a nice way to guarantee nobody gets down there in time to see the start. Link is quiet and not overflowing much; Culvert et al. are flooded by snowmelt. F&M did not see fit to disturb their pile of black sand. Daisy bounced around quite a lot from 2 1/2 hours to well over 3.
Two Artemisia steam clouds, 2016IE Friday and 1753IE Sunday. Since I didn't see anything 1700-2030 Saturday, my fingers are crossed that it was a triple interval;  the last logger download in March showed many 12-17 hour intervals but also several over 20. Jewel 9-11 minutes. Two Floods seen while driving past. I still haven't seen Till, Great Fountain or White Dome yet this year.

A very short visit to Porcelain Basin on Saturday showed several more spouters out on the flats than I had seen two weeks before, and I saw one 5-minute Fireball and a 2-eruption Constant series. Whirligig calmly overflowing; Ledge calmly overflowing; Dark Cavern dry as a bone. Splutter Pot's vent is high and dry but it wasn't erupting. The "highlight" of the visit was some rather unusual graffiti in the runoff by Whirligig: the standard "X heart Y" inscription, but with the names in Chinese characters. Orange letters on a green background - the orange cyanobacteria had had time to grow back while the green Cyanidium hadn't. It is attracting copycats (there were 4 inscriptions, 2 English and 2 not) so I hope a ranger with a brush goes out to erase it soon.