- A research video camera captured an eruption of one of Yellowstone's hydrothermal features.
- Such explosions at the Black Diamond Pool are consistent since a massive eruption occurred in 2024.
- Researchers placed equipment in the area to help them understand the features and better forecast future events.
Video cameras positioned in Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin captured video of a hydrothermal explosion Sunday. The Black Diamond Pool sprayed muddy water and debris at least 30 feet into the air.
The eruption was one of many such randomly timed explosions that have occurred in the last 16 months at that location, said Michael Poland, the scientist-in-charge of Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
“They might happen with only a couple of days in between them, or it might be weeks. We seem to go through a period in the fall where there just weren’t many of these sorts of events,” Poland said. “Now we’re in a period where they’re happening every few days, give or take.”
Cameras have caught several of the previous eruptions in Biscuit Basin — about two miles north of Old Faithful — on film. However, they were not clearly visible like the one this past weekend, captured on a clear, bluebird day.
That was because, in one instance earlier this year, the researchers’ camera lens froze over. Mostly, though, the eruptions occurred overnight where the only discernible indicators were the audio and some visible ripples spread out over the pool’s surface.
The referenced period of months began in July 2024 when the Black Diamond Pool had a massive explosion in full view of visitors to Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin.
It took nearly a year of sleuth work and piecing together clues for researchers to determine the ultimate cause of that explosion. Poland wrote up their findings in his weekly newsletter called the "Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles,” which is published by the U.S. Geological Survey.
“Hazards associated with hydrothermal events cannot be understated,” Poland wrote in August. “The July 2024 event at Biscuit Basin expelled boulders large enough to smash through boardwalks as visitors ran for safety.”
Researchers concluded that changing, mounting pressure of the underground plumbing system caused the explosion — not something more nefarious or scary like a larger geological event.
The subsequent explosions are the effects of the hydrothermal region resettling after such a massive reset, of sorts.
Such explosions and hydrothermal activity is quite normal, Poland said. Though, that doesn’t stop people from responding with hyperbole online, in comments and in their own social media posts.
“We put the video online and, of course, we got the typical response: ‘Oh my God ... Yellowstone’s waking up!’ you know?,” Poland said, “without really understanding that this happens many times a day, all over the park. ”
How did Yellowstone capture the video?
After the Black Diamond Pool eruption in 2024, researchers were trying to find ways to detect more of this kind of hydrothermal activity, Poland said. To do so, they installed a series of new sensors in Biscuit Basin this past July to record more activity and in different ways.
“In some ways it’s exciting to be able to have this kind of activity and having it occur in an area where it’s not threatening anyone, and it’s being recorded very well by this new monitoring system that we put in place,” Poland said.
The reason the region is safe is because, aside from Yellowstone being closed during the winter months, it has not yet reopened since the large blast a few years ago. The boardwalks themselves have not been repaired either.
Still, recording seismic activity in Yellowstone can be tricky, Poland said, because of the sheer volume of input happening all the time.
“If you want to detect a magnitude one earthquake somewhere in Yellowstone, you don’t want to have a seismometer sitting next to something like this pot of boiling water,” Poland said.
With the new equipment, however, they’ve got those bigger picture concerns covered and can focus on the audio features.
“Getting into the hydrothermal systems, we’re really learning about just how noisy — in an interesting way — these features are," Poland said. “We can hopefully use that noise to better understand what’s going on right beneath the surface. ”
So while such explosions are sensational and somewhat scary, they are also helpful to researchers who are trying to understand what’s happening underground in Yellowstone well before it becomes what’s happening above ground.
“I’m hopeful that as we pour through all the data that’s flowing,” Poland said, that “we’re going to learn some new things about how this feature is working and, perhaps more generally about hydrothermal activity, that will help us to be better able to forecast occurrences of possibly hazardous things in the park.”