Is Yellowstone going to blow?

Hahah, yeah, You know 5 years back i heard that on Discovery, i still keep hearing that off and on; when it happens it happens ... can you do something?



Rick
 
Crunchy Cat said:
I just saw this article about swarms of earthquakes hitting Yellowstone in a very non-normal way:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_sc/yellowstone_quakes

Is this puppy going to blow? If so, it could take out a good chunk of the US.
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If it blows, pretty much the entire U.S. is effed in the A. But the worst part is, that it will have a trickle down effect and affect the entire planet in more ways than one.
-our 'breadbasket' region is right next door to Jellystone. If those corn, wheat, grain crops are taken out, the whole world will suffer
-the megatons of ash that the eruption will spew out will eventually cover the entire planet, giving us a pseudo-nuclear winter for at least a few months.
It won't wipe out humanity, but it will change the way we go about things for a while, if not permanently.
 
Probably not going to blow. It's not impossible that this batch of quakes are leading to something bigger (same as any other), but if you panic every time there's a rumble or two chances are you're going to lose a lot of sleep over very little.

Also it's worth noting that even if it's an eruption, that doesn't mean it's a big one. Yellowstone has had numerous smaller eruptions than the caldera-forming ones.
 
The way it seems to cycle , it won't be for a few thousand years or so but that could change at any time as we all know.
 
I am interested more in "Why" will it or why has it happened in the past more than "whens" when is going to be guessing, unless we know of a definitive path or a way to predict ... which i am guessing we don't (ironic but that is an educated guess ;) ).


Rick
 
Yes, it is going to blow.

Some day.

There's a theory that every few hundred million years or so the rock intelligence that is the planet's major inhabitant gets bothered by the little niggles on its outer layer, and scratches where it itches.
 
why would it blow and not just ooze like it does in Hawaii? It already has hoot pools and geysers. Wouldn't that let off some of the pressure? If the ground split due to an earthquake, wouldn't that let off some of the pressure as well?
 
Orleander said:
why would it blow and not just ooze like it does in Hawaii? It already has hoot pools and geysers. Wouldn't that let off some of the pressure? If the ground split due to an earthquake, wouldn't that let off some of the pressure as well?
Click to expand...
Because it's not just one big volcano, it's a bunch of smaller (but equally dangerous) volcanos, all being fed by the same giant magma caldera underneath Jellystone.
A show about this on the History Channel said that if even one of those smaller 'outlets' blew, it would cause the rest of them to blow their stack too.
 
Rick said:
I am interested more in "Why" will it or why has it happened in the past more than "whens" when is going to be guessing, unless we know of a definitive path or a way to predict ... which i am guessing we don't (ironic but that is an educated guess ;) ).


Rick
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Yellowstone Park (the whole thing) is a volcano that literally explodes every 600,000 years. We are at the 600,000 year mark.
 
Orleander said:
why would it blow and not just ooze like it does in Hawaii? It already has hoot pools and geysers. Wouldn't that let off some of the pressure? If the ground split due to an earthquake, wouldn't that let off some of the pressure as well?
Click to expand...

Hawaii has different volcanos. The entire Yellowstone Park has massive pressure underneath it. There is no place to ooze really. One day (unless we can find a way to relieve the pressure) a massive pyroclastic blast straight up will happen.
 
The people close to the blast will be lucky, and die quickly. The outlying areas will be effed in the A.
Because, all that ash will spread quickly across the continent, essentially 'snowing' down ash. Much like when Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines back in the day.
Unlike snow, if you are out in that falling ash and breath it, it will cake inside your lungs and kill you from lack of oxygen.
Some more good news about the ash, if it falls on your rooftop, it will accumulate. It will accumulate in volume and weight until it crashes your roof in.
You wouldn't be able to go outside w/o some sort of paint or gas mask on.
 
Crunchy Cat said:
Yellowstone Park (the whole thing) is a volcano that literally explodes every 600,000 years. We are at the 600,000 year mark.
Click to expand...

To add to what John99 just said: The volcano does not literally explode every 600,000 years. It has exploded three times.

From http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/calderas.htm
Three gigantic caldera eruptions rocked the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The first and largest, Huckleberry Ridge caldera, blew up about 2.1 million years ago. Its center was in western Yellowstone National Park, but it extended into Island Park, Idaho. Welded tuff from this cycle is called the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff. The yellow rocks along the road in Golden Gate between Mammoth Hot Springs and Swan Lake Flats are Huckleberry Ridge Tuff. So are the tuffs that hold up much of Signal Mountain in Grand Teton National Park, and that crop out along the west side of the Teton Range, in Idaho.

The second great explosion formed the Island Park caldera 1.3 million years ago. This caldera, the smallest of the three, lies just west of Yellowstone in Idaho, within the western part of the Huckleberry Ridge caldera.

The youngest caldera, Lava Creek, erupted the Lava Creek Tuff, 0.65 million years old. It overlaps the Huckleberry Ridge caldera, but its eastern margin is about 10 miles farther east. Because it is the youngest, its tuffs and associated lava flows are best exposed and its history best known. Its eruption may have destroyed the south part of the Washburn Range.​

These are only the last in a series of eruptions. From http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020716081303.htm,
The Yellowstone hotspot, which powers Yellowstone National Park's geysers and hot springs, produced 142 huge volcanic eruptions during the last 16.5 million years - far more than the 100 previously known blasts, University of Utah geologists found. ... While geologists Michael Perkins and Barbara Nash identified many more of these catastrophic eruptions than had been known previously, they also showed the rate of such eruptions has slowed: about 32 giant eruptions per million years before 15.2 million years ago, slowing to 10 to 20 huge eruptions per million years between 15.2 million and 8.5 million years ago, and then only 2.5 cataclysmic blasts per million years during the past 8.5 million years.​

In short, Yellowstone does not erupt like clockwork.
 
No need to be concerned. No need to worry. What's a few hundred 3rd magnitude earthquakes happening this past weekend and centered under Yellowstone Lake. Right?
 
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