Geologic Secrets of Old Faithful Geyser and the Upper Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park 

You bet. I love filming a few videos while I am traveling and adventuring. Win-win!

Thank you so much! I appreciate your continued viewership.

Please do!

I came in through the west entrance at West Yellowstone. I was in the Mammoth area last fall and did see the flood damage. Pretty incredible.

Yes, we used the Geyser Times app/website when we were there.

Thanks so much for your kind donation.

West entrance. All roads in park are closed. Used a snowcoach shuttle to get us into Old Faithful where we stayed at Snow Lodge for two nights. Enjoyed several days of awesome XC skiing and geology.

www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo

Thanks for watching. Yes, its a magma that is largely crystallized so think of it like 'mush'. As such, it is not currently in a state where it is likely to erupt anytime soon. Here are some papers that might help: www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-surprising-amount-of-magma-is-under-yellowstones-supervolcano-180981229/ www.usgs.gov/observatories/yvo/news/yellowstones-magma-reservoir-comes-sharper-focus

Mush zones can be really hard to visualize but here's my attempt at paraphrasing the explanation that a volcanology professor gave me during my undergrad (and hopefully someone more qualified will correct me if I say anything wrong). The simple view of magma chambers as a region of completely liquid rock really doesn't work out because you need to get rocks absurdly hot to melt them 100%. This is because rocks are just a big collection of minerals with varying melting temps. Quartz for example starts melting around 600C, while other minerals may not begin melting until upwards of 1200C. 1200C is incredibly hot for upper crustal conditions like where the Yellowstone chamber hangs out, even with the hot spot beneath the area. So you can't melt all the minerals - but you can certainly melt some of them. The percentage of the rock that is melted is known as the melt fraction and depends on a huge variety of things - temperature, pressure, chemical composition of the rocks, etc. I would assume this is what Shawn is referring to by saying the magma is largely crystallized, is that it has a low percentage of the rock that's actually melted. If your melt fraction is super low, like 1%, then you'll have tiny little pockets of melt on a microscopic scale. Individual mineral grains begin melting from the outside in, so the edges of the mineral grains with low melting temps might be melted. But at a very low melt fraction, those pockets will still be surrounded by solid rock. It's only when you get a high enough melt fraction that those little pockets might begin to connect and form a network that allows the magma to move around at all. Think of water flowing through sand - most of the volume is taken up by solid material but there's enough space between the individual sand grains for water to flow. I think perhaps the sand analogy is best - a mush zone is like wet sand in a sense, except instead of water, the sand grains themselves are melting and acting as the liquid. Now the requirements for moving that magma around to a point that it will erupt, melt extraction, is INCREDIBLY complex and I know plenty of people who've spent their whole careers studying this and there's still a ton we don't know. I certainly don't understand it well enough to make a coherent comment about it. But the basic principle is that we need a high enough melt fraction to actually get our mush zone to a point that we can get magma erupting out of it. Estimating melt fraction is hard, and we (I say we because I am doing this for a project right now) can estimate it using seismic waves from earthquakes. Maybe the articles Shawn linked below can simplify it better than me, but in the most basic sense seismic waves travel at different speeds through different materials and by comparing the time difference between waves arriving at our instruments on the surface, we can build an image of what's underground. Melt tends to slow down waves, but certain types of waves are more affected than others. We can use this info to estimate melt fraction. However, that's really hard to do and papers come out all the time suggesting that we've been doing it all wrong, such as the second one Shawn linked. That paper said we've likely been underestimating the melt fraction beneath Yellowstone. That said, it's still not at a point where it's likely to erupt soon. I hope this helps, this took me an entire semester of university courses from a fantastic volcanologist to begin understanding how this stuff works so it's understandable if it makes your brain hurt!

@@qwryzu Hard to read, constructive criticism, paragraphs are your friends I've been told.🙂

Yes, water is confined by its plumbing system and continues to be heated from below. Water exceeds boiling point (~198 F at this elevation) due to pressure of water above. Eventually, superheated water flashes to steam causing expansion which drives water upward to create geyser eruption.

The elevated boardwalks are still there. Just covered in a few feet of snow, making them even more elevated. We often had a railing down by our feet.

Yes 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Should have been more specific.

For sure!

Thanks so much for your kind donation. Much appreciated to warm me back up.

My question too.

Roads are all closed. Only options are a commercial snowmobile tour or a snowcoach. We took a snowcoach shuttle from west Yellowstone to Old Faithful and stayed at snow lodge.

I don't think it plays a factor as the pressure of superheated water flashing to steam in the confined plumbing system is so much greater.

@@shawnwillsey I knew it was a stretch but it would have an effect according to the math but not measurable nor documentable. obviously you are aware that even at normal elevations from sea level to lets say 3,000 feet that cooking and boiling times change. but the change from sea level to lets say 6,000 feet thats a hell of a lot more than barometric changes? I would have to research it but I hope you do first.

you are the youngest you have to do it

Some geysers are effected by barometric pressure, Daisy geyser located not too far from old faithful sometimes has its intervals extended by 10-20 minutes due to thunderstorms or snow.

Yes 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Should have been more specific.

Sorry. I left on Sunday.

@@shawnwillsey oh gosh man i'm always just joshin'. Don't be taking people t-shirts....people should be taking you t-shirts

What's the man supposed to do? It's almost zero outside and he was cross-country skiing. You wouldn't be in any better shape