Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Something else...

to worry about. Earlier this month it was reported that a flurry of earthquakes occurred at Yellowstone National Park. The press immediately seized upon the opportunity to speculate on the imminent eruption of the supervolcano.

Indeed, the Yellowstone caldera has a history of recurring eruptions on about a 600,000 year schedule, and we are about 640,000 years out from the Lava Creek event that created the present-day caldera and spewed tephra across a large part of the western US. A similar eruption would make the 1980 Mt. Saint Helen's event look like a diminutive firecracker for comparison.

I'm not losing any sleep over this, but then again, I don't live in Billings, Montana.

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