<div dir="ltr">Greetings from Old Faithful!<div><br></div><div style>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.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>GIANTESS</div><div style>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.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>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 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67WvFDQ5No">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b67WvFDQ5No</a>. None of my still pictures show much of anything, due to the lack of contrast: white water, white steam, white snow, white sky.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>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.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>CASTLE</div><div style>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 <a href="http://geysertimes.org">geysertimes.org</a>. Here's a screenshot of yesterday's Castle download:</div>
<div style><img src="cid:ii_1440d86d307fc30c" alt="Inline image 1" width="766" height="478"><br></div><div style><br></div><div style>GRAND</div><div style>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div style>LOWER GEYSER BASIN</div><div style>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.</div>
<div style><br></div><div style>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!</div><div style><br></div><div style>
Enjoying winter,</div><div style>Cathy</div><div><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>--</div><div>Cathy Bell</div><div>Park Ranger</div><div>Old Faithful Visitor Education Center</div><div>Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190</div>
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