<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2668" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>First, in case you hadn't heard, there was an earthquake at 2208 last night, magnitude 5.6 with an epicenter 13 miles northeast of Dillon, MT. That puts it roughly 110-120 miles from Old Faithful. Most people at Old Faithful and here in West Yellowstone felt the quake, for me a gentle back and forth. Were any geysers affected? Well, maybe. But first about Fan and Mortar.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Fan and Mortar erupted today at 1442, the interval being 3d 23h 50m. But that's not the story. Earlier (about 0900) there was a pathetic event cycle that consisted of exactly two splashes in Main Vent. That was all. Thereafter, the cycles were pure garbage. In the cycle before the eruption (at about 1350),  Gold came on rather quickly after River; Angle had not stopped from the previous cycle. The one remarkable (?) thing was that Gold's water remained quite high for several minutes, but only Gold (High and Angle seemed their usual weak and erratic selves). So almost everybody departed the scene. Fortunately, not quite everybody. A short while later came the call that High Vent was playing 2 to 3 feet high steadily. Angle was on, as it again had not stopped from the previous cycle. A few minutes later, about when everybody was headed that way from hither and yon, came the call that Gold and Angle were also steady -- Fan's vents were in lock. I do not have all the detailed times of this progression. Suffice to say that most of us got there in time. The eruption started perhaps 30 seconds after a surge in Upper Mortar, but it was an East Vent-Main Vent start with Mortar (both vents) a few seconds later. A bit of Fan's water reached across the boardwalk and the dirt, perhaps 2 or 3 feet into the plants near Backwater Spring. Nice lighting. Mostly nice wind direction. My video is a keeper.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Moral: F&M can erupt from what appears to be a garbage cycle -- this one involved absolutely NO "event" -- unless High going steady several minutes before Gold and Angle can be called an event.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Back to other stuff. Daisy was having remarkably short intervals -- 2h 08m and 2h 11m, and we saw some (not much, but some) boiling/surging in Splendid's main vent. Earthquake effect?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It was discovered during the day that nobody had seen Plume. Sure enough, low and its surroundings bone dry. Yesterday it had been doing what it had been doing recently -- intervals mostly 45 to 60 minutes. So it quit sometime in the night. Earthquake effect?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Beyond that, all seemed pretty normal today.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Scott Bryan</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>