This comes up every year or so.
The thing is….if the caldera blows, pretty much everything West of the Mississippi is gone, and the rest of us are eating roots for a year or so.
So…spending any time worrying about this is wasted.
“The thing is….if the caldera blows, pretty much everything West of the Mississippi is gone”
Likely the west coast coastal areas and up to the summit of the Cascades would be spared the worst of it (I know some people would like it to be the reverse). And most of CA would be spared (in the same category).
I live about 100 miles east of the Cascades and am probably just at the edge of the expected worst impact zone. Distance from Yellowstone about 600 miles. So much depends on the winds aloft at the time of an eruption. This whole area typically experiences westerly and southwesterly winds most of the year and sometimes northerly in winter. Easterly winds basically don’t happen except for small areas. If winds are strong and westerly at the time of the eruption heavy ash flow could occur as far east as Vermont. However, many volcanologists believe the Yellowstone formation is too old geologically to sustain another major eruption, at least another near million megaton one.
You say that like that is a bad thing.
Luckily not all is lost! I'll pay .10 on the dollar right now for your Montana real estate, so you have cash to get out now!
That’s not the geology I learned about Yellowstone and the surrounding areas that essentially run for hundreds of miles north to south. I was instructed that the Yellowstone volcano would not “erupt” in the conventional sense of the word - as in Pinatubo, or Vesuvius, or even Mt. St. Helens. This vast region is called a big “Rift Valley” - meaning that the crust will split and lava and gases will “flow” across the landscape. It’s like dumping hot fudge on your sundae or the thick juices of a pie breaking the surface crust. It does destroy huge expanses of the landscape and what the lava doesn’t bury, it will burn and kill every living thing with it’s radiating heat and poison gases. There is ample historic evidence of this unique rift form of volcanic action across multiple states. Fascinating stuff, but I hope and pray we never see it go active.