The Lake, which is the location of last earthquake swarm and an underwater bulge atop the caldera, has been doing this for a few days now -- intermittent, abrupt shakes. Notice that the seismometer's sensitivity is set at 500 microvolts, as opposed to 50~125 at most other stations in the park. So the shakes would max out at 100 microvolt sensivity.
These shakes are local to the station, and obviously not seismic. My (amateur) guess is there've been quasi-periodic magma movements or water sprouts at the lake bottom. Notice that Old Faithful sprouts don't register anything at the YFT station set at 125 microvolts. So these bursts are likely at least a hundred times stronger than Old Faithful.
I didn't realize the Upper Falls station is set at a much lower sensitivity than others, 1428 microvolt vs 50-125 at most other stations. Here's the one on 1/3:
The Lake station has been offline for 1/9/09.
To put it in perspective, the frequency of harmonic tremors range from 3-8/min. Wave your hand up and down once every 10 seconds. Imagine the ground goes like that. You'll see how liquid-like it is, almost soothing.
Since the earthquake swarm at Yellowstone started on 12/27, I've been following it with modest amusement. The idea of a super-eruption (VEI8, or even if just 7) of a supervolcano is mind-boggling, thus fascinating -- certainly would make the man-made financial crisis infinitesimally, pathetically trivial.
BBC did a very good drama on supervolcano -- watch all 12 of the two-part series:
It's drama, but fairly correct scientifically except, of course, the part about timing. Although the timing is intentionally ambiguous, it implies it's sometime in the near future of human civilization. This is pure speculation. To quote an old SNL bit: it's possible...but it's unlikely...but it's possible...but it's unlikely...
Yes, familiar nice sine wave patterns. It's called harmonic tremor. It means the magma was on the move. It has two possible outcomes: either stop and disappear, or the shit blows up.
If you check the other stations in the park for the same time segment, you'll see the same harmonic tremor pattern almost all over the park.
We dodged a potentially huge fucking bullet, this time.
It's known that there's a dome at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake, where virtually all of the quakes of this swarm have taken place, that's been rising in recent years. It doesn't take a very imaginative mind to link the two.
What'll happen next? From all I can gather, seismo-vulcanologists say it could happen before I finish this sentence or it could be a million years from now. In other words, they're as clueless as Paulson/Bernanke on CDS, or Bush on the joy of intellectual stimulation, or Obama on unrealistic expectations.
Nothing to worry about, though. If it's a global extinction event, then there's no pain -- who's gonna be around to witness and record all the fantastic screaming and scrambling around and unfulfilled love and unfinished blog posts? The topology of the pain space is circular, infinity = 0. Just as globalization of the financial crisis, through Lehman bankruptcy, made crisis management that much easier and less painful.
Future rat archeologists will no doubt puzzle over their findings a great deal. Poor little fuckers.
PS: As the massive molten mass of magma was sloshing around under Yellowstone, I was enjoying GREAT food and decent wine at a newly discovered Hunan restaurant, the discovery of which was as accidental and meaningless as Yellowstone decided not to blow up at just about the same time, in Flushing with a bunch of friends celebrating my birthday. I thought I had a great birthday party going. But little did I know how great it was.
PPS: If you have to know, it's called 湘水山庄, about 100 yards east of Northern Blvd and Main St, on Northern Blvd. The best, most authentic Hunan food I've found on this continent, before it's covered in three feet of volcano ash anyway. It's so authentic they don't even bother with an English menu. Setting and service are quite decent, and the price is CHEAP.
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