[Geysers] Pink Cone Group and the earthquake swarm

[Gordon Bower]

Both Pink Cone and Great Fountain have histories of being sensitive to earthquakes, so I had my eyes peeled for anything "interesting" on Firehole Lake Loop this past weekend.

There isn't much information on GeyserTimes for Bead and Pink Cone the early and middle part of September, so we don't know exactly when changes occurred, but the timing is highly suggestive:

This past weekend, Bead was averaging 27 minutes, with a range of 24 to 31. This is a sharp contrast to the 31-36 minutes reported on 04 September (and to several years of intervals in the mid-30s every time I have checked on it.) 24 may be the shortest I have seen since I started carrying a logbook. At the same time the durations have gotten *longer*: I had 9 good durations, 2m39s to 2m53s averaging 2m46s, last weekend, compared to the a range of 2m10s-2m50s averaging right around 2m30s the last time I took durations on it (last fall). 

Pink Cone also appears to have changed its intervals substantially: it was seen at 1100ie Friday (end 1210) and 0940ie Saturday (end 1102), within the normal range, but had already finished and was barely even puffing steam at 0810 Sunday, pointing to an interval under 21 hours. Karen Low reported another eruption Tuesday evening for a presumed triple interval under 60 hours. 
While there were individual intervals under 21 hours earlier this season, there were never two, let alone four, in a row; the average has been up around 23 or 24.

At Great Fountain, the past week on Geysertimes shows three 19-21 hour double intervals and two 30-31 hour triples, as well as two closed intervals of 8h55m and 11h06m. There have been occasional scattered short intervals all summer, but the average has been over 11 hours.

After a bit more data comes in over the next few weeks, I will try to crunch some numbers and put together a small article.

On White Creek, there is a big patch of sizzling ground / small perpetual spouter, at the bend in the creek upstream of Botryoidal, and the feature close to the road that was a scummy brown pool with a trickle of overflow is now also a small perpetual spouter, water level out of sight but throwing droplets up high enough to be visible every few seconds. (But I  have no details when this summer either of these started.)


GRB