Yellowstone Geysers

Yellowstone geysers come, as they say, in all shapes, colours, forms and sizes. Some have names, some are nameless. Some are known throughout the world, while other ones remain anonymous. No place on Earth could boast about such a huge amount of geysers as Yellowstone with its impressive 500 geysers. There are mud geysers  in Yellowstone, and even a mud volcano, although today the mud volcano is not that violent as it once was, spewing mud into the treetops and shaking the ground with each eruption: it spits mud a bit, but no more than that.

Colorful geyser

Colorful geyser

Not every Yellowstone geyser is active, some are dormant, such as the Excelsior Geyser. It first erupted in the 1880s in bursts from 50 to 300 feet (15 to 91 m) high — and wide, which for some reason sounds even more impressive to me, — and ceased its eruptive activity after 1890. Then all of a sudden the mighty Excelsior struck again in all its fury and anger. On September 14, 1985, it roared back to life with 47 hours of major eruptions. Then the eruptions ceased and the violent Excelsior became dormant.

Excelsior Geyser

Excelsior Geyser

It’s impossible to predict when it’ll strike in the future. It could never happen again, but for the same money it could happen every single minute, — which in itself is quite a special thought while walking along this sleeping giant, knowing that in theory the eruption can occur at this very moment, with bursts of hundreds of thousands litres of boiling water per minute, tens meters high and tens meters wide, destroying pretty much everything around itself.

Old Faithful

Old Faithful

Though not all Yellowstone geysers are that unpredictable. The world-famous Old Faithful erupts approximately every 91 minutes, which can vary from 45 to 125 minutes. Each eruption lasts 1,5 – 5 minutes, reaches as high as 145 feet (44 m) and gathers tons of spectators. One of whom was me.

Aleksandr Skorobogatov: press and reviews on the books

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