[Geysers] geyser report 13-15 may

[Gordon Bower]

One more short geyser trip to report. Going to the park every weekend is habit-forming, but alas, I'll have to take next weekend off to, among other things, finish planting a garden.

Logbook information is very sparse for the 8th to 13th (as in "no closed Plume interval all week") so I don't have many additional details to offer about the Giantess recovery. By the evening of the 13th, Giantess was full and overflowing as usual (no surprise there - 3 days to refill is/was typical.) Infant is calm, sitting a little below overflow. I did not see any water out of Sponge or Model all weekend, though I didn't spend a great deal of time looking for it. In the 90s, several days of inactivity post-Giantess was normal for Model but not-so-normal for Sponge. The "Dwarves" area, after having done almost nothing on my two previous visits, is back to the vigorous activity typical of the last couple years. Copper Kettle is still overflowing. Plate has been reported several times by the webcam folk and I saw one nice large eruption Saturday evening. The UNNG uphill from Plume and Ballcap (active on the 8th) did not attract my attention on the 13th or 14th but was active from a very low water level the afternoon of the 15th.

Little Squirt the evening of the 13th (ending morning of the 14th) did not stimulate Beehive into a short interval this time around: knowing about the 1023 eruption on the 13th I stayed up well past midnight waiting for it, no joy. 1542 on the 14th (15-minute indicator) and 0604 on the 15th were the only two seen this trip. Silver Spring was boiling loudly from a low water level, occasionally throwing a white froth high enough to be seen above ground, all weekend.

Plume was variable but still generally around an hour, with the exception of Sunday afternoon when I got a 48-minute closed interval, my shortest so far, and a 99-minute double. Plume may be a beneficiary of howling south and east winds: Giantess's runoff was mostly pushed the other way, and almost the whole area from Spume's crater down to Plume was completely dry. A full-size eruption of Plume was pushed downwind enough that only a trickle of water came towards the bench area, leaving at least two-thirds of the formation between Plume and the trail dry. I have suspected in the past than an awful lot of Plume's irregularities -- lengthening of its intervals in the mid-90s and its tendency to 'sleep at night' in the late 90s -- had to do with the volume and temperature of water that poured down the slope above it. 

A nice sequence of closed intervals on Depression Saturday: 0637, 1004ie, 1301, 1702, 2058ns. From a distance, these appeared to have several nice bursts each, but rather short durations. Little Cub has picked up speed: 33-minute intervals before the Saturday afternoon Beehive, 37-39 minutes the rest of the weekend.
Water levels at Aurum are dropping. No more abundant discharge from the satellite vents and constant pouring of water off the platform at or even before the 3-hour mark. Two closed intervals of 3h35m and 3h45m and one double interval just shy of 8 hours. The meadow between Aurum and Pump is already drying out though the one behind and below Aurum is still very wet. Fingers crossed that "summer mode" doesn't start quite yet.

Castle mixed things up a bit with two consecutive minors (predawn and 0902) Saturday, and waited all the way to 2133 Saturday night for a very pause-ridden major. Fairly normal first-after-a-minor interval to 1205 Sunday. The aforementioned strong south and east winds also reduced the amount of Crested Pool runoff pouring in to Tilt. Jim reported one eruption early Sunday morning; I saw convection over the vents (after having seen none the two previous weekends) later that day.

A long run of Tardy, Penta, and Churn ended with one short Sawmill mixed in Friday evening (more Penta late evening and early Saturday morning), followed by "all Sawmill all the time" on Saturday and Sunday and at least two Uncertains (0849 and 1115) Saturday. Twilight had a nice episode of filling up almost to the rim, splashing to a few feet, and draining every couple minutes while Sawmill came out of a deep drain Saturday morning. I also caught the end of a steam phase Penta during Sawmill after the 6-burst Grand concluded Sunday, and, at the same time, something I had not seen before, a "steam phase Tardy" - an almost-continuous thin vertical jet of water that looked a lot like Uncertain, just a little too big and in the wrong place.

Friday and Saturday Crystal Spring was very high: not just filling its channel, wetting its crater rim, and making the two holes on the NE side of the formation go "splat" each time it filled, but pouring a mini-waterfall of water into the pit on the west side and spilling a trickle into Old Tardy's vent. On Sunday on the other hand Crystal was having a normal 'bad day' where all of its runoff was vanishing into Slurp. Belgian Pool was also a little bit lower on Sunday - odd, since in the past the rule of thumb was that one was high when the other was low, and odder, since in the past the transition between high and low water in Crystal often happened the day of Rift. No Rift all weekend. (And no West Triplet reported, either, just lots of overflow and mild bubbling and convection.) Many Bulger majors. No change in the status of the collapse feature between Bulger and the trail.

And that brings us to Grand. On Saturday the overnight double interval (Fri 1952 - Sat 1045) was just shy of 15 hours, the daytime interval was 8h06m and according to the electronic device, the missed overnight eruption was at 0149 for an interval just under 7 hours. Jim commented in that the 1-burst eruption Saturday morning had a duration between 13 and 14 minutes. The long durations and short intervals were already remarkable before the fun Sunday at noon.
Several of us showed up between 9 and 10 Sunday expecting another interval under 8 hours. We got there too late to see a Sawmill start up close and the pool looked terrible; with nothing else in the area to see (no fun at Crystal Spring anymore!) I went up to spend an hour at Solitary, prepared to watch the top half of yet another 1-burst Grand from there. My parents turned up in the parking lot around 10:30 and phoned to ask me what was going on... I told them  Beehive had already gone, Grand was at 8 1/2 hours, and they decided to walk out there and wait. I spent over an hour at Solitary, came back down, considered sitting down at Aurum (it was at 3 1/4 hours), but headed for Grand to meet my parents and make plans for lunch.
A funny thing happened as we came past Sawmill (still going, 3 hours into a long eruption): people at Grand turned around, looked at us, waved at us, took our pictures, a few came running eagerly toward us. Had we won the lottery? Was the national news media eager for an update on Solitary? No, it turned out, Castle had just started, and because we were right next to Sawmill we hadn't heard the falling water behind us. I asked my mom when the last Turban had been (1156, she told me), thought the pool looked awfully good for 11 minutes in, and was pleased to see it stay full.
The 1212 Grand was a perfectly normal 3-burst eruption. It wasn't like the 4-burst eruptions of the early 90s where we prayed for 7-minute first bursts. First burst was 9m12s, the pool stayed full of pretty green water for the pause, nice normal second burst. The crowd of assembled tourists applauded politely. The pool thought about draining, came back, and everybody was delighted to see a third burst even though it was "just" a nice big burst, not one of the massive wide columns of water that used to make third bursts look so different from second bursts. The ever-present strong south wind made for great viewing, pushing all the steam away from the water, though it did make it hard to see Vent start. When the third burst ended we were at 12m12s, the pool drained away respectably, and Vent and Turban immediately made it obvious they were going to quit.
As Turban quit splashing I wrote "G3Q" in my notebook. I remarked to Emillie "gee, I don't remember Turban just sitting there boiling and overflowing into Grand like that... usually it either keeps erupting, or it drains down below the rim right away. But it's been a long time since I saw a 3-burst, maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention years ago." Then I heard Jim, standing on a bench, shouting "there's water! there's water!" and Turban built back up to a rolling boil and starting thinking about bursting again. Oops... maybe I was too fast with my "Q," and Vent and Turban are going to continue after all. More white froth in Grand, and back it came for a fourth burst. A nice normal burst, would have been a respectable second burst any other day in 2011.
As I crossed out "G3Q" and replaced it with "G4Q" - this time Turban wasn't still boiling and overflowing, and Vent was 90% steam, just puffing a few water droplets a few feet high - Emillie asked me how often Grand had fourth bursts. I said I remembered it as being a once-every-couple-weeks event in 1992 and 1993 but hadn't seen once since I moved to Alaska. And then the water came back again a fifth time. A nice normal burst, would have been a respectable second burst any other day in 2011, except that Grand started before Turban, which isn't something I've ever been able to say about a non-first burst. I crossed out "G4Q" as soon as the fifth burst went up, but was a paranoid and didn't write down anything to replace it yet.
We were all a bit giddy with excitement now -- both the gazers who knew this was really rare, and the tourists who had just read the standard "1 to 4 bursts" in their brochures -- and I'm sorry to say I can't clearly remember what Turban did during the pause after the fifth burst. It was a very short pause, and our eyes were all glued on the little bit of white froth that was dancing in the mouth of Grand's crater, rather than looking around at anything else.
When the last splash of the sixth burst fell to the ground, the platform was dead. Vent had quit a few seconds before Grand. The water level was already out of sight in Turban. Grand's pool was already completely empty. All three holes were puffing steam (contrasted with the usual sight of Grand dead and Vent and Turban puffing steam before they restarted.) Grand led the restart, too, spitting a few droplets of water out of its empty crater before Vent and Turban got going again properly, and taking an unusually active part in the afterplay, with many 10- or 20-foot splashes. We all knew that "afterbursts only happen when Vent and Turban continue," but we all knew that 6-burst grands don't happen either, so nobody was leaving in a hurry. The pool never did try to refill, Grand continued to have some intermittent splashes - BIG intermittent splashes, enough to hide Turban's afterplay from sight, almost like the late bursts on the 2nd day of a water phase Giantess, and keep me looking over my shoulder until at least 1252.
Jim had commented on the radio Sunday morning that Grand was very consistently reaching first overflow about 4 1/4 hours after an eruption (he guessed 0145 for the overnight Grand based on first overflow ~0600, before the rangers retrieved the 0149 electronic time). Sunday afternoon at 1649 I saw Grand almost full with the runoff channel already wet: even after the 6-burst eruption, Grand had had first overflow ~1630, right on time (and as reported on the webcam page, the following interval was a normal 8h16m.) I guess that extra water from Crystal Spring was put to good use!
People do call the starts of bursts at slightly different times, but I got the same overall duration (16m31s) as someone else reported. My complete list, for those who are curious: durations of 9m12s, 1m05s, 45s, 53s, 46s, 42s, pauses of 47s, 23s, 43s, 39s, 36s. Longest eruption of Grand I've ever seen by a big margin.

Anticlimactic other geyser news: I again saw only one Oblong steam cloud all weekend. Daisy rather perversely had some of its shortest intervals of the spring during the strong south and east winds on Sunday: 2h26m, 2h14m, and then 2h12m. Several Grotto starts and one Rocket major (nearly 3 hours into Grotto) were reported on the radio. Riverside continues around 5 3/4 hours. A river vent pause was radioed Sunday morning, but no other mention of F&M in the logbook or in person. Artemisia was seen by a real live person (not me) Saturday at 1110, and I saw a steam cloud Sunday at 1429ie, presumed double interval. The bear warning sign at the Biscuit Basin end of the trail was taken down sometime Sunday.
Jewel is still running 10 or 11 minutes. I still haven't seen Till, White Dome, or Great Fountain yet this year. I understand secondhand that some of the newly arrived gazers are keeping tabs on Fountain but I do not have details.

I did take a quick trip over to the lake, where it is still very much winter (deep snow everywhere, no cracks in the lake ice or gaps of open water for a few feet close to shore). Lone Pine was overflowing. My parents reported Fishing Cone was a peninsula and looked very dry, and also reported a duck swimming in one of those mud pots in the West Thumb parking lot (at least two of them are swollen into full pools extending out beyond the wooden railings by the snowmelt; apparently they aren't all that hot or acidic right now either.) At Old Faithful the snow is going fast, with just a few patches of it left on the trail between Lion and Sawmill, and the with the grass greening up in the meadows, the bison are spending a lot less time walking on the roads and sitting next to the hot springs. Our only wildlife excitement was a coyote in the Inn parking lot around 0735 Sunday. It briefly channeled its inner lapdog, sniffing at a red fireplug before chasing some geese out of the pond the other side of the trail and then disappearing into the woods between Castle and the gas station by 0745. I was pleased to not see it approach anyone to beg.