[Geysers] winter update

[Karen Webb]

Don't apologize for the footage. I thought it was great! Yeah, really 
hard to see it from the cam the day before, but fun to know it was there.
Karen


On 2/7/2014 11:44 AM, Bell, Catherine wrote:
> Greetings from Old Faithful!
>
> After two very cold mornings (-32F at OF yesterday, -47 at West 
> Yellowstone), it has now warmed up to a balmy 16F.  It's snowing 
> prettily, with a couple of inches of lovely fluffy stuff so far.  We 
> continue under a winter weather advisory through 5:00 am on Sunday.
>
> GIANTESS
> The big news since I last wrote, of course, is last week's Giantess 
> eruption.  As you know, it was spotted by Ranger Landis Ehler on 
> Wednesday, January 29 at 1455ie.  All of us on staff at the visitor 
> center were able to get over to see it that afternoon, despite a 
> howling snowstorm that impaired visibility even from the closest 
> points on the Geyser Hill boardwalk.  Unfortunately, the weather and 
> darkness drove us inside before the initial Vault eruption.
>
> I had geyser predict the following morning and was able to ski past 
> Giantess on my return.  I was lucky to arrive at the right moment to 
> see some nice big splashes.  I'd estimate the height as ranging from 
> 30 feet all the way up to 100 feet on a few especially impressive 
> bursts.  I took a short, poor-quality video that you can view at 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67WvFDQ5No.  None of my still pictures 
> show much of anything, due to the lack of contrast: white water, white 
> steam, white snow, white sky.
>
> By Friday morning, we no longer observed any activity.  Visitor 
> reports of a few splashes in the early morning make us suspect an 
> approximate duration of 40 hours.  I have no information on how long 
> the crater took to refill.
>
> CASTLE
> Castle was erupting this morning ( Feb. 7, 0905ie MJR) when Ranger 
> Annie Carlson went out there on geyser predict, so no electronic times 
> today, which is too bad: Castle has been up to some interesting stuff 
> over the past few days. Minor-major-minor-minor, at the very least. 
>  We initially reported this as four minors in a row, but reviewing the 
> data makes us feel confident that the eruption of Feb. 5 at 0312 was a 
> major after all.  We have corrected our data on geysertimes.org 
> <http://geysertimes.org>.  Here's a screenshot of yesterday's Castle 
> download:
> Inline image 1
>
> GRAND
> We had some problems with the Grand logger that kept us from getting 
> electronic times for several days.  The logger has now been replaced 
> and the new one is functioning nicely.  We're going to be shortening 
> our prediction interval for Grand from the current 7 hrs 30 min to 7 
> hours.
>
> LOWER GEYSER BASIN
> Guides have reported Fountain times to us on 11 days since Jan. 20. 
>  These reports are of course limited to when they happen to be passing 
> through, so we have no closed intervals.
>
> That's about all I have for now.  If you have any specific questions 
> about what's going on in the geyser basin, please don't hesitate to ask!
>
> Enjoying winter,
> Cathy
>
> --
> Cathy Bell
> Park Ranger
> Old Faithful Visitor Education Center
> Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Geysers mailing list
> Geysers at lists.wallawalla.edu
> 
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