Things Are Happening Above and Below the Yellowstone Volcano

A video has been making the rounds recently of what the uploader claims is a UFO over the Yellowstone supervolcano caldera. The owner gives it the self-congratulatory title of “Impressive UFO” and gives its date of origin as June 9, 2017. The quality of the video isn’t bad for a daytime sighting, but it’s certainly not good enough to ascertain, as some observers have, that it’s a “metallic” object. This would normally be enough to file it in the “another UFO over Yellowstone” file …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw-rAyV9btA

… except for the fact that a series of minor earthquakes began hitting the area around the supervolcano, beginning on June 12 and ending on June 19. The largest was a magnitude 4.5, which was the strongest in the area since 2014, but the real news was that this co-called “swarm” totaled over 400 small quakes in a week. Knowing how sensitive we are to apocalyptic signs, experts at the U.S. Geological Survey were quick to point out that “swarms” of earthquakes in the area have occurred before without causing an eruption and the chances of one happening now were quite low. That’s comforting news, even if it comes from a government agency, and would normally be enough to bring swarms of people back to Yellowstone to watch for geysers and UFOs …

… unless they heard about a presentation at the recent 2017 IAVCEI (International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry) “Fostering Integrative Studies of Volcanism” conference which revealed that a recent study at Yellowstone found that the most recent eruption of the supervolcano was triggered when new magma moved into the system just decades before the eruption, not millenniums as had been previously believed. Changes in layers of crystals seemed to indicate rapid temperature increases that precede eruptions. While the researchers caution that the evidence is inconclusive and more study is needed, the UFO, earthquakes and quickness of the magma buildup before the last superuption sound like dots that a re close enough to connect and scare tourists and residents alike far away from all things Yellowstone …

… other than Old Faithful. The aptly named geyser still erupts faithfully every 90 minutes or so, but that interval has lengthened recently and some fear it’s because the earthquakes have affected subterranean water levels. Fortunately, Science reports that scientists recently used 133 seismographs spread across a square kilometer near the geyser and the measurements taken indicate that Faithful’s underground thermally-heated chamber still holds hundreds of millions of gallons of water and shows no signs of running out of earthquake-generated cracks. The time interval actually hasn’t changed … the measurements have simply become more accurate. That should make residents, tourists and those who depend on tourist dollars rest a little easier …

… until the next earthquakes, geological revelations, geyser anomalies or UFO appearances.