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Posted on 01/21/2010 6:50:18 PM PST by george76
If calderas were brag-prone creatures with bumper stickers, La Garita's would read "my volcanic eruption kicked your volcanic eruption's butt."
La Garita in Colorado's San Juan Mountains cut loose with a massive magma explosion about 27 million years ago during the Oligocene Epoch, spewing out an estimated 1,000 cubic miles of ash, its center collapsing under the force. To date, La Garita is the largest known single volcanic eruption in the world. In only a few weeks, it pumped out about enough material to fill Lake Michigan.
"Ash from La Garita killed everything for at least 100 miles in every direction and would have seriously affected everything for much further than that," said Peter W. Lipman, scientist emeritus with the U.S. Geological Survey's Volcano Hazards Team.
If La Garita's top-blowing event filled a 35-gallon trash can, the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption amounted to a cup of espresso. Pinatubo's eruption in 1991? Enough to fill a regular-size Styrofoam coffee cup...
La Garita was among 18 volcanoes that went off between 20 and 30 million years ago leaving behind a string of calderas. One of them, the Creede, is sliced through now by the Rio Grande
(Excerpt) Read more at santafenewmexican.com ...
Wasn’t that right about the time Helen was born?
It is still there and if it ever blows we are well and truly....
It might beat known eruptions today but the Siberian mantle plume eruption consisted of lava flows across pretty much all of Siberia.
The Indian mantle plume eruption was another big one about the time of the dinosaur extinction. (They had a couple of rough years)
lol
The Long Valley Caldera in California just up the road from me was no wimp either, 700,000 years ago, the volcanic eruption killed large animals in what is now Nebraska and dumped hot rocks on what is now New York.
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Paging Danny Glover.
I am not sure if it is not also surpassed by Toba, about 74,000 years ago. I tried to find volume ejected data, but the only figure I came up with was that it ejected 20 to 50 time what Tambora did in 1815. I think also that one of the 3 Yellowstone events also was bigger than 1,000 cubic miles in volume.
Lipman returned in the 1980s and again with other geologists in the 1990s. Each time they had newer, better equipment that allowed them to sleuth out more of La Garita's puzzle pieces. By 1996, geologists had mapped the La Garita caldera as a 20 mile by 50 mile oval. The Bandelier Tuff that marks the Valles Caldera is about 14 miles in diameter.
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It was my understanding that the volcano whose collapse formed the Valles Caldera soared to an estimated height greater than Mt Everest....
Los Alamos is on the eastern slope ....elevation 7000+ feet.
Info:Valles Caldera
Thanks.
It is a lovely area now.
Back in the day, it must have been rather noisy and dusty, then with massive snow falls and spring run offs.
I have been over much of Colarado,...but this is new to me...
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La Garita Caldera is a large volcanic caldera located in the San Juan volcanic field in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, United States, to the west of the town of La Garita, Colorado. The eruption that created the La Garita Caldera was, perhaps, the largest known explosive eruption in all of Earth's history (the Siberian Traps may have been larger but the cause is still being debated).
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I have not been to Creede:
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Creede is located near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River, which flows through the San Juan Mountains and the San Luis Valley on its way to New Mexico, Texas, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.
I’ve always liked that guy, ever since his days running Pendant Publishing. Thanks Ernest, good links.
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