The recent swarm of earthquakes noted at Yellowstone National Park were most likely caused by shifts in tectonic plates, not pressures in the magma chamber beneath the park, according to geologists.
According to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, University of Utah semismograph stations in the park noted a pair of earthquakes Sunday evening that measured magnitudes of 3.0 and 3.1. The first event of magnitude 3.0 occurred at 11:09 p.m. and was followed by a magnitude 3.1 event at 11:21 p.m., the observatory reported.
Both shocks were located around 9 miles southeast of West Yellowstone, Montana, and about 10 miles northwest of Old Faithful. Typically, events of this magnitude are felt in and around the park, but there were no reports of these particular events being felt, the observatory noted.
These two earthquakes are part of an ongoing swarm in Yellowstone that began January 17, 2010. The largest earthquake in the swarm as of 9 a.m. MST, January 25, was a magnitude 3.8, the observatory reported. There have been 1,271 located earthquakes in the swarm of magnitude 0.5 to 3.8. This includes 11 events of magnitude larger than 3, with 97 events of magnitude 2 to 3, and 1,163 events of magnitude less than 2. There have been multiple personal reports of ground shaking from observers inside the park and in surrounding areas for some of the larger events.
Earthquake swarms are relatively common in Yellowstone.
The swarm events are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults and are called tectonic earthquakes and are not thought to be caused by underground movement of magma, the observatory staff noted. Currently, there is no indication of premonitory volcanic or hydrothermal activity, but ongoing observations and analyses will continue to evaluate these different sources.
Seismic information on the earthquake can be viewed at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations: http://www.seis.utah.edu/.
Seismograph recordings from stations of the Yellowstone seismograph network can be viewed online at: http://quake.utah.edu/helicorder/yell_webi.htm.
Anyone who has felt earthquakes in the swarm are encouraged to fill out a form on the USGS Community Felt reports web site: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/.
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I just Googled John Delano and found this on Barack Obama's campaign website -- for whatever it may be worth.
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After 34 years of research I have a book worthy of your attention.the name is "The Origin of Mountains" Delano's discovery. It is a book that is proof of the "yes we can" actions of the new president is very possible.
Yes We Can by Delano59 - Nov 10th, 2008 at 11:53 am est
The Origin of Mountains, is a recent book that has been self published after my 34 years of research.
My book is ready for the optomistic "yes we can" geeneration as presentated by the new presidency of Senator Barack Obama. My book explains where the location of undiscovered oil reserves are that are larger then the entire Arabian desert oil fields. Yes we can achieve energy independance in the next 8 years...
It is a book that finally offers a tenable alternative theory to the plate tectonics theory that is in error, but believed by 90+% of the population . Yes we can move ahead with a simple and accurate science that will be the replacement of plate tectonics, and will become the "common sense science in the land".
The book explains the exact location of the equator and pole positions over the last 248 million years and how the ice cap and the ice flows moved on the planet that ice cap and continantial size ice flows that were a higher volume of all the continents on the planet and still had enough volume to fill eventually, with water every ocean on planet earth. Yes we can trace the crust movement ,"free nutation of the chandler wobble" over the planet with accuracy,by following the rebound ridges, the footprints of the ice that moved overhead...
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Well, I am totally speechless, Mr. Delano. Why didn't you tell those poor souls in Haiti they were about to be earthquaked? With your knowledge, you should have seen it coming.
Hello Inquiring Mind,
I would like to bring something to your attention about Yellowstone's Super Volcano that the USGS cannot not fully disclose under the Obama Administration, "a gag order" on the USGS about the state of Yellowstone's Super Volcano. This gag order goes all the way back to the 2000 Bush administration. More about this later in this report.
Rather than go into a lot of detail, my objective here is to keep my information short as possible while still getting to the point.
First hand, when the Earth under our feet starts to vibrate, however hard or light, people are naturally inclined to call it, an earthquake. But if the ground under our feet was vibrating do to heavy Earth moving equipment near by; its not an Earth quake, despite the ground may be shaking quite a bit from such activity.
The same goes for the so called earthquakes in a fixed area of Yellowstone. When we look at a quake map for Yellowstone between January 17, and January 25, 2010, we see that nearly all of the quake activity is not only centrally located, but when mapped out, the some one thousand plus quakes are clustered together in a very defined area underneath Yellowstone, forming a circular or slight oval shape pattern on a quake map.
Unlike tectonic plates and or fault lines which traverse a straight or jagged line for great distances, a "circular pattern" is formed on a quake map from thousand of quakes over the last three years not only suggest the movement of magma underground, but pinpoints the central location where magma is most likely to come out of the ground first. Ground zero.
What's even more interesting that when you layer the quake maps on top of each other from the past several years, nearly all of the quakes are centrally located within this circular zone within Yellowstone National Park. If you map it out say, using Google Earth, you can easily see this for yourself.
In summary: In no uncertain terms, the Yellowstone quake data indicate that the quake swarms are not the direct or indirect result of the movement of tectonic plates, rather it's the ground rumbling on a grand scale from the magma under Yellowstone that's bubbling and churning as the magma tries to work its way closer and closer to the surface once again.
Yellowstone Park is basically a blast zone from former eruptions; naturally there are old fissures and or fault lines in the bedrock that surround the caldera that are a direct result from such a horrific blast. What the seismograph stations in and around the park are actually seeing with the bigger quakes are not the results of tectonic plates on the move, rather large fissures that run along and around the caldera that suddenly break, releasing energy from being stressed from the immense thermal dynamic pressure of magma on the move underground, stressing the ground above in a lifting motion.
Thus what is really going on is the park grounds is rumbling from the buildup of pressure below, and on occasion, stresses local fissures to the point where they suddenly give way, resulting in a much bigger jolt. Its the bigger jolts that indicate the continuation of the uplifting of the land. Like a pimple forming on our face, at some point all this uplifting will come to a head, and will burst, but when?
When? I would like to add that the Yellowstone Earth quake data for the last three years in a row reveals a pattern that may be an indicator of possible trouble on the horizon. Since I am still looking into this data, I cannot get into any real detail, but I will say this.
If the pattern I have found is not a result from random chance, than it only goes to reason that there must be some outside force that is acting upon the Earth in yearly cycles. The Yellowstone quake data shows that for at least the last three years in a row, Yellowstone starts to rumble around the end of each year and or soon after the start of a new year.
It may be random chance, and nothing more, but I'm not an astronomer. The timing of the quake swarms each year may be synced to a solar system with the effects of the moon being the trigger. For now, its all speculation until hard data proves this. If the Yellowstone quake swarms is truly a pattern in sync with our solar system, this may very well serve as a means to forecast an eruption date right down to a forty day window. Again, there is no hard data to support my suspicions about a pattern. Even if the data could give us a forty day window, would the data tell us around what year?
On a last note, during the Bush administration in 2000, he ordered that all USGS reports about the state of Yellowstone's Super Volcano first come to his desk for review before being released to the public. At which time, any alarming or concerning words or phrases that might alarm the public were either removed or changed, thus homogenizing the report. Additionally Bush further ordered that the USGS not to speak directly to the public about the status of Yellowstones volcano. There by what you read from the USGS is softly worded and uses slight of words/hand to direct our attention away from whats actually going on.
As you may know that if the surrounding population around Yellowstone thought they may very well be in real danger, business and banks alike would leave, causing serious economic disaster in the region. Its for this very reason why Bush has put a tight lid on the USGS and it does not look like Obama administration is going to overturn this gag order.
If you do your own homework, you will begin to see that what I am sharing with you in regards to the thousands of Earth quakes over the last several years in Yellowstone are not about tectonic plates, rather Yellowstone National Park is rumbling from the continual uplifting of the Earth in the immediate region as lava continues to find a path back to the surface.
"Gag Order" source. Jim Burkland, Retired USGS whistle blower orginally aired on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
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Additional insight on the gag order for the USGS @
http://www.matchdoctor.com/blog_32787/Yellowstone_volcano_bulging_rapidl...
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© 2010, All intellectual Rights Reserved.
I think the 08-09 swarm was an old fault.
This swarm is different its probably caused by the magma chamber expanding to a new space underneath
Yellowstone.
And the Pacific ocean is not an impact crater
What caused the break up of Pangea is an asteroid impact that created the ENTIRE GULF OF MEXICO.
In addition to the five or six super volcano eruptions, there have been thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of smaller volcanic eruptions over or near the Yellowstone hotspot. Inside of the most recent super volcano formed Yellowstone Caldera, there are many smaller craters and calderas. The West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake is a smaller caldera, for example. There are others. You can survey the area in Google Earth and see circular or oval areas of collapse everywhere. There is what looks like a caldera just a couple of miles south of where these recent earthquakes have been.
To the southwest of Yellowstone Park, in Idaho, are dozens of cinder cones and fissures. Some are very visible (and are labeled) in Google Earth just to the west of the Henry's Fork Caldera...west of what is known as Bishop Mountain in Idaho.
There are also many faults in Yellowstone. As the North American Plate has pushed over the hotspot, it has created local tectonics. The Teton Range in Wyoming and the Centennial Range along the Idaho/Montana border are two of the youngest mountain ranges in North America and were created by the special tectonic forces around the Yellowstone Hotspot. These two ranges are perpendicular to each other and lines along these ranged would intersect over the current hotspot. The entire Yellowstone region is uplifted by the large hotspot and the uplift is sort of V shaped like a bow wave before a boat moving in water. This uplift and the special tectonic of the region create faults of all types.
I am not buying the fault slip theory since the earthquake swarm is so centrally located. Faults are planer or along lines and when they slip (whether normal, reverse, or strike), the quakes tend to be distributed along the fault and are several miles apart. The hundreds of quakes in this current swarm have all been within a mile or so of each other at varying depth. I think it is probably volcanic, but I think it is probably normal scale (which is small scale for Yellowstone) volcanism.
I live in Imperial Valley California (about 115 33) and experience the shaking from Obsidian Butte that is very similar to this episode. However, our shaking is not tectonic, but rather magmatic (due to the natural geothermal properties of this area)., and fromm what I see here these too are magmatic. 1. The depth is only about halfway to the bottom of the tectonic plate. 2. The siezmic activty doesn't have any "relative" activity along any close fault zones. 3. The activity is patterned (regular or repetitive) that doesn't fit well with the whole broken rock theory behind tectonics. This looks to me like a percolating effect that you see at mud-pots and similar vulcanic activity. My advice to those concerned, you better not let your guard down until this thing is long dead. Remember the caldera is overdue for an eruption.
I am no expert, but I never hear of "Swarms" from other tectonic earthquakes....I only hear of swarms associated with magna and Yellowstone.
Again, I could be wrong, but that alone seems strange to me...
Agreed. I do not think it as much to do with the plate movements as magma moving. Have they not gotten progressevely closer to the surface? I have also read a few reports about bison being killed by gasses, water near trails heating up and tourists being burned. Also, as follows: "Surface displacements of the Yellowstone caldera are interpreted to reflect migration of magma or hydrothermal fluids. The inverse relation between vertical displacements in Yellowstone and its surrounding regions may reflect an upper crustal flexural response or a large-scale movement of hydrothermal fluids, though neither hypothesis is completely supported by the processed data." aDepartment of Geosciences, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho 83209-8072, United States
Received 19 May 2008;
accepted 20 May 2009.
Available online 8 June 2009.
recieved may 2008? this information is at the very newest a year and 7 months old. It isn't completely supported, but it's been said that it could be magma.
do some research people. its getting dangerous in there.