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Created by a 7.3-magnitude earthquake in 1959, Yellowstone's Red Spouter is a thermal with many personalities. Depending on the season, it can be a hot spring, a boiling mudpot or it can just spew hot gas. Many of Yellowstone National Park’s thermal features are defined by their personalities. The regularity of Old Faithful, the colossal noise and steam clouds of Steamboat Geyser or the colorful palette of the Artists’ Paintpots. By that logic, the Red Spouter might be Yellowstone's most ambitious. Instead of building a reputation around a single personality, it tries to — and succeeds at — being many...

A Florida man who filmed himself walking on hot thermals in Yellowstone National Park earlier this month has been officially cited for a violation of federal law and ordered to appear in-person at the U.S. District Court in Yellowstone on July 27. Matt Manzari, who told Cowboy State Daily that he created the video as a joke, broke the law by leaving the park’s boardwalk and walking on the thermal features near Old Faithful on July 1. As has been customary in these cases, the defendant must appear in court in-person. The motivational speaker from Clermont, Florida, previously told Cowboy...

Steamboat has erupted 34 times as of Tuesday, according to the US Geological Survey. That breaks last year's record of 32 eruptions -- the largest number ever recorded in a year. The record before that was 29 eruptions in 1964. June's outbursts smashed the record for the shortest interval between eruptions -- just over three days. Scientists aren't sure what's behind the recent increase in activity, but the short answer is that this is just how geysers work. It's a popular misconception that geyser eruptions are related to earthquake activity, but Poland said visitors to the national park have nothing...

The study, titled “Powering prolonged hydrothermal activity inside Enceladus“, recently appeared in the journal Nature Astronomy. The study was led by Gaël Choblet, a researcher with the Planetary and Geodynamic Laboratory at the University of Nantes, and included members from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Charles University, and the Institute of Earth Sciences and the Geo- and Cosmochemistry Laboratory at the University of Heidelberg. ... Based on the way Enceladus orbits Saturn with a certain wobble (aka. libration), scientists have been able to make estimates of the ocean’s depth, which they place at 26 to 31 km (16 to 19 mi)....

The quake hit at 8:41 AM local time, less than a mile from the surface. A second smaller quake hit five minutes later. "The earthquake was the largest in the Geysers area in the past 30 years. This magnitude 5.0 earthquake is only marginally larger than previous earthquakes at the Geysers," USGS Research geophysicist J. Ole Kaven wrote to SFGATE. "This earthquake occurred on the western margin of where previous seismicity has been located." ... "The historical record of earthquakes in this area suggests that earthquakes as large as today's are likely to be near the upper magnitude limit," wrote...

Solar System Geysers—Each a Fountain of Youth by Brian Thomas, M.S. * A sticky problem for nature-only origins just got 100 times worse. When discovered about ten years ago, a remarkable plume of water ice ejected from Enceladus, an icy moon in Saturn’s E ring, left secular notions of the moon’s origin up in the air. Detailed inspection of Enceladus now shows not just one, but 101 geysers shooting ice particles into space through four fissures that cut across a basin in its south-pole region.1 If these geysers formed billions of years ago as secular origins models insist, then small...

The video you are about to watch was filmed by a driver who stopped along the freeway with many others just outside Al-Ahsa City, in Saudi Arabia. Throughout the last few years there have been many theories put forth as to what caused this phenomenon. Along with those theories, various names have been used to describe it, like "Sand Geyser," "Sand Fountain," "Sand Volcano," and "Sand Injectites." The quality of the video is not the best because it was filmed with a cell phone, and the person who filmed it has not ever identified himself. However, the video is...

I apologize (again) for being off-schedule; I've had these pictures ready to go for awhile, but I haven't been ready to go. Also, look in the first comment for a REAL bonus. Anyway, the hot springs at Dallol, Ethiopia have been very "wet" recently, due to anomalously high precipitation, leading to some really remarkable (other-worldly) scenery. Below are a few, with links to where the others are. Dallol (the recent pictures are at the bottom of the page) Dallol in January-February 2011: Large and colorful ponds

KINGFISHER -- Mysterious unrefined natural gas leaks erupting in rural Kingfisher County in recent days continue to have officials puzzled as to their cause. "We originally thought a pipeline had exploded," said Matt Skinner, Oklahoma Corporation Commission public information manager. "We had the pressure to zero pressure, and the leaks seemed to get bigger. So that's not it." Skinner had said at a press conference Monday geologists and hydrologists are beginning to study underground maps of the area to find an explanation. "We've ruled out the probables, and now we're into the unprobables," he said. "We've never seen one like...

KINGFISHER, Okla. -- An outbreak of geysers spewing mud and gas into the air in rural Kingfisher County is puzzling state and local officials. Kingfisher Fire Chief John Crawford says initial reports of the geysers came in Friday morning, and that firefighters and Oklahoma Corporation Commission officials were on the scene yesterday. The geysers have appeared throughout the countryside of rural Kingfisher, with stretches of up to 12 miles between spots, and some as short as a quarter of a mile.

KINGFISHER -- State and local officials are puzzled by a series of geysers that have erupted in recent days in Kingfisher County, spewing mud and gas into the air. The geysers have appeared throughout the countryside, with stretches of up to 12 miles between spots, and some as short as a quarter of a mile, Kingfisher Fire Chief John Crawford said. The threat of the gas igniting is "unlikely," Crawford said, but a bigger concern is the gas could begin coming up through water-well lines.

Yellowstone is a world wide draw By Cara Eastwood outdoors@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle I scoured Yellowstone National Park during the first week of June, surrounded by European and Asian tourists. At each turn in the road, I found another tour bus squeezed onto the side of the road as its passengers pressed their faces to the windows to ogle an elk, a herd of deer or in one case, a dead bison. Other tourists I saw drove expensive SUV rental cars to explore the park. They all must have gotten the memo that American schools weren't out yet,...

Link post: click the link and view the image and discussion, and post comments on that thread: Geology Picture of the Week ALERT: Ikonos Views Yellowstone!

I hadn't checked Earth Observatory for a few days, and the images for the last three days were rather blah. But I checked the archive, and found this stunning Ikonos view of the "central" Yellowstone thermal feature area. The Old Faithful/Upper Geyser Basin is largely out of the picture to the south, but there's a lot to see here. I linked the image/article page at the top. Below is a link to the full-resolution image. I'll provide a brief guided tour. Go to the linked article below (also linked above) and click the full resolution image link): Grand Prismatic Spring,...

(CBS) For years, CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, scientists have tried to understand the dynamic nature of Yellowstone National Park. "It's beautiful up here, everybody should see this at one time or another," says one appreciative observer. Scientist Lisa Morgan may have unlocked one piece in the puzzle, deep below the park's biggest lake. "It is kind of the last unmapped frontier in Yellowstone National Park," says Morgan. What she found looks more like the surface of the moon. Using sonar she's identified a massive bulging dome the size of seven football fields. The only other underwater dome in...

Link post: any discussion posts should be posted in the thread linked below. This post is to alert readers who might possibly be interested to the post in the FR 'chat' section. You can skip the thread and go directly to the site by clicking on the article link above. Geology Picture of the Week, March 21-27, 2004: Superb Yellowstone site (with geyser videos).

Those of you who have "followed" the Geology Pictures of the Week may know that, one, Yellowstone National Park is one of my favorite places on Earth, and two, the Stromboli On-Line site is one of the best sources for high quality, volcanologically related pictures and media anywhere on the Web. Put the two together and you've got a winner. The best part of this site is the geyser videos; the photography is actually a tad sparse, but I've picked a nice one below. Click the linked article above to go to the site and enjoy! Norris Geyser Basin

Alert post for Geology Picture of the Week, April 14-21, 2002

Since I posted an article about the problems with National Park funding, National Parks Suffering from Lack of Funds, I thought this week's picture should be of one reason why this should be important to all of us.