PowerSwitch

What's happening at Yellowstone?

Nothing that doesn't normally happen at Yellowstone.

Unfortunately.

Why the question?

Officially - it's all tickety boo

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/

doesn't look like nothing to me, and I'm not an expert.

As far as we know, nothing unusual is happening at Yellowstone at present.

There is however the potential for a huge eruption of the volcano. This could be big enough to destroy a significant part of the USA, and to dramatically alter the weather world wide. The debris thrown into the air would probably drastically reduce crop yields by blocking out sunlight, and might even be an extinction event.

Whilst some scientists believe that this could happen "soon", they mean soon in the geological sense of the word, perhaps within ten thousand or twenty thousand years.
It COULD happen this week, but that is so unlikely as to be a long way down my list of worries.

Stocks of food, fuel, tools, clothing, blankets, and footwear would help to an extent with any drastic climate change.
Such supplies are prudent to keep IMHO, but are more likely to be needed in case of war, riot, civil disorder, peak oil chaos, extreme weather, industrial disputes, pandemic illness etc, than for a Yellowstone eruption.

There have been a few articles in the end-of-the-world-is-nigh media that are saying it's all going stratospheric in the next few weeks.

So of course it isn't.

I remember a few years ago a bit of panic because lake levels kept shifting, suggesting the massive magma pool was filling again, deep underground. Then things went quiet again.

My guess is that if it was going to blow we would have months or years or decades of significant seismic activity and that sort of thing is likely to get noticed.

My attitude is that it is a possible end of the world event I have absolutely no control over, so I don't bother worrying.

A relative of mine who appeared averagely healthy for 54 sat down and died last month, with the cat asleep on her knee. Could happen to any of us.

PS_RalphW wrote:My guess is that if it was going to blow we would have months or years or decades of significant seismic activity and that sort of thing is likely to get noticed.

A few years ago I asked a couple of volcanologists whether it was possible for big eruptions (Tambora scale) to happen without any prior warning. They both said yes, as long as it wasn't a currently monitored known one - in which case you might get several weeks. It's quite possible for a new, big volcano to appear where there isn't one currently though.

PS_RalphW wrote:
A relative of mine who appeared averagely healthy for 54 sat down and died last month, with the cat asleep on her knee. Could happen to any of us.

Not me. I don't have a cat.

Vesuvius is due to blow at any (geologic) time as well and Krakatoa is on the rise again. Then, of course, we could have a large meteor strike at any time. Then, again, any one of us could be killed in a car accident.

My wife was whipped into hospital in an ambulance with blue lights flashing on Monday night for six hours of tests because she complained of chest and arm pains. Luckily it was all put down to the chest infection that she was already being treated for. NHS came up trumps this time, thankfully. There are more things to worry about in this world than natural disasters.

Or, as the Dalia Lhama put it recently on Facebook, "If you can do something about, it why are you worrying? If you can't do something about it, it's not worth worrying!"

Video of 15 years of data from Iceland in four minutes:
http://vimeo.com/24442762

Iceland introduces red alert, low level flight ban.

Lava eruption, not under the ice, no dust clouds at present.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-28979100

I think it's gone down to "Amber" now.

I've just read this article about the ashfall from a Yellowstone eruption (you might have to fill in a two question survey to get to the full article) and they're going on about a computer simulation of the ashfall and how it would affect Billings, Montana which is about 150 miles away. It was written to see how close aircraft could fly to the ash cloud! They felt good because the ash fall would only be from 3 to 5 feet thick!

I was under the impression that if Yellowstone went up the shockwave would devastate an area of about 600 miles radius and the ash cloud would cause a nuclear/volcanic winter worldwide for several years. And they're worrying about the depth of ashfall and whether or not they can fly a plane close to it! The complacency of the American public and their media defies description!!