[Geysers] Norris & Steamboat datastream...

[Davis, Brian L.]

On Aug 1, 2013, at 9:26 AM, Michael Goldberg <goldbeml at ucmail.uc.edu> wrote:

> The USGS temperature logs for Steamboat are here:
> http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/yellowstone_monitoring_33.html

I'm curious if they are releasing any of this data digitally - right now I'm limited to repeated screen captures and visual interpretations, and it would be nice to have the data itself to look at. Still...

> The major eruption does not stick out as dramatically as one might expect.

It doesn't... but there's some interesting things there anyway. A while back I posted that Steamboat had a long-period (weakfish, more like 5 days currently I think) "envelope", with a resting or quiescent phase every so often based on the stream temperatures. The major occurred on the first active period just after one of these quiescent phases, which may be significant, or a complete coincidence. If Steamboat would only be kind enough to erupt in majors perhaps 10 more times, so that we could determine the correlation, that would be fine, thank you :).

I've been watching the graphs to see when it might start minor behavior again (it hasn't apparently), an noticed something else odd - not at Steamboat, but at nearly every other instrumented Norris spot, there was a sudden temperature drop on the evening of 9 Aug. Porkchop, Opalescent Spring, Constant, Echinus, all show this - but when I look at the Nuphar Lake air temperature, there is *not* a huge drop (but there *is* a drop... and there's a drop in the Vixen ground temperature, but later in time than for the geyser runoff channels). Even things like the Gray Lakes show this downward spike very clearly. So a question for those who might know... was there one *heck* of a sudden downburst out there that flooded everything with cold rainwater for a very brief time? And if so, does it surprise anyone else that it shows up almost not at all at Steamboat (where the channel sensor presumably has been dry or sitting in a stagnant pool, and so I'd expect to see a strong response to a sudden downburst of cold rain)?

-- 
Brian Davis