Hello friends, I hope your Sunday is going well. Real quick, I'd like to throw out a reminder that there is only around 6 hours left to enter my Abandoned Shit Weekly Contest, with this week's theme being "old wood". Submit an entry if you'd like to take part, but if not, check out the #aswcontest tag to check out some cool abandoned stuff!
Anyway, today's Daily Nature Fix is about one of the coolest geothermic phenomena: geysers. In particular, geysers in Yellowstone National Park. If I were to ask you to name a geyser, most people (including almost everyone in the United States) would probably answer with "Old Faithful". I'd be willing to say that it's the most popular geyser in the world, let along in Yellowstone's boundaries. HOWEVER, there are over 1,200 geysers in the park. This post will shine the spotlight on a few of the others; like this one:
^^^ This little fella is called "Whirligig Geyser". It's located in the Porcelain Basin and, while small, it's one of the more active ones in the park. Every few minutes it seemed like it bubbles and splashes, eventually spewing hot water around 15 feet in the air, or so.
^^^ This one may not look as cool because there's no water being shot up from the ground, BUT this geyser is actually the largest one in the world in terms of eruption. This is the Steamboat Geyser and is located in the Norris Geyser Basin. Steamboat's eruptions can't be predicted, plus they are at random, sometimes with years of dormant periods, so it's not one of the biggest attractions in the park. Most of the time, it's just a steam vent, like in this photo. Ironically, it did erupt only 4 days before our trip, but it was in the middle of the night so we wouldn't have seen it anyway. It's eruptions are huge though, with water reaching heights of 300 feet! That makes it the tallest active geyser in the world. Upon reading, I just saw that it has erupted 18 times this year - that most active year for it in over 30 years! The last one seems to have been in mid September and lasted for an hour and fifteen minutes.
^^^Here's the White Dome Geyser, located in the Lower Geyser Basin. This one erupts several times throughout the day, but not quite as predictable as Old Faithful. I remember the "possible eruption time" windows spanning several hours. We happened to be somewhat close when it happened to erupt and I got this picture from a distance. It has a decent size eruption, reaching heights of 30 feet.
^^^This last one has my favorite name of this bunch: Spasm Geyser. It's also in the Lower Geyser Basin and seems to be very active, like the first one in this post. It's eruption is very fitting for it's name. It seems like it's constantly thrashing and gushing in a slightly violent way.
Thanks for reading! I try to post a nature-themed Daily Nature Fix blog every day. Please upvote if you enjoyed it and resteem if you found it especially interesting! Be sure to follow me @customnature so you'll never miss out on your nature fix! See you tomorrow. - Adam
*** These daily blogs showcase the natural world. It is all original content using photos, stories, and experiences from my own travels. ***