Yellowstone Earthquakes

A week or two ago, there were reports in the news about a swarm of earthquakes near Yellowstone National Park, provoking media reminders that most of the park sits over a caldera, a collapsed volcano. Crater Lake in Oregon sits inside a caldera created by a collapse of Mt. Mazama, but the large eruption associated with that collapse pales alongside that of some of the eruptions at Yellowstone, which has now been categorized as a "supervolcano". A modern supereruption would mess up life in the U.S., if not globally. Some scientists predict it could happen again, some say it won't.

I think things are quieting down now, but the mainstream media might not bother reporting that boring fact. See this page for a listing of events above magnitude 1. https://pobox.bradley.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/43.45.-111.-109_eqs.php There have been only a couple teeny ones in the last few days. It will be interesting to keep an eye on. Interestingly (but not alarmingly) - there have actually been more teeny quakes in the New Madrid Zone (southern Illinois, eastern Missouri, western Kentucky, western Tennessee) in the last couple days than in Yellowstone.

I’m so glad we stopped at Yellowstone for an afternoon on the way to Seattle in 2007. Not enough time to truly do the place justice, but enough to get a taste of its awesomeness. It still bore the scars of the fires in the 1988. Above are a couple pictures from the visit.

Not many recent pictures to show. Peoria is cold, but not much snow. I'm 4 days into my 11 day interim class. Kristine's 10th birthday is tomorrow. On Sunday, ABC will be showing the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that was done in Pekin, IL just a few months ago (pix of our visit to that event are in a previous post).