Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world. It is famous for its geothermal attractions, like the Old Faithful geyser. The park's got a secret, a volcanic secret!
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Yellowstone is the world's first national park.
00:07 Its main attractions are spectacular geysers,
00:10 hot springs, and mud pots.
00:12 These geothermal features are made possible
00:15 by an enormous magma chamber, a super volcano.
00:19 - It's not a pointy mountain
00:20 like Mount Fuji or Mount St. Helens.
00:22 It's sort of a large volcanic field
00:25 that's experienced a major collapse,
00:28 meaning that it's had a large eruption
00:30 and the ground has collapsed into the space
00:33 that was evacuated when the magma chamber emptied.
00:37 - The volcano had at least three eruptions
00:39 in its ancient past.
00:40 An eruption today could devastate much of the United States
00:44 and even have climatic impact worldwide.
00:47 Fortunately, scientists do not expect
00:49 an eruption anytime soon.
00:51 - There's no indication
00:52 that the Yellowstone magmatic system
00:54 is really gonna be waking up anytime soon.
00:56 The Yellowstone magma system is mostly solid.
00:58 It's only about five to 15% molten.
01:01 The rest of it is just hot, kind of plasticky, solid rock.
01:05 - Michael Polan, who monitors the volcano's activity,
01:08 says the park is a very seismically active area,
01:12 receiving an average of between 15
01:14 and 2,500 earthquakes per year.
01:18 - They're very small events caused by all of the water
01:20 that's moving around in the subsurface,
01:21 and the area is chock full of faults
01:25 because it's in a very tectonically active part
01:27 of the Western US, and it's also weak
01:29 because of the heat that's being input to the system
01:33 by the Yellowstone volcanic system.
01:35 - Even though the volcano will not erupt anytime soon,
01:37 scientists said it will erupt again one day.
01:41 Polan says they can make forecasts on the volcano
01:44 by looking for indicators.
01:46 - If we saw earthquake activity begin to pick up
01:48 in very significant ways,
01:50 instead of seeing thousands of earthquakes every year,
01:53 we were maybe seeing tens of thousands,
01:55 but we would also see ground deformation.
01:57 The ground at Yellowstone rises and falls.
01:59 It goes up and down at rates of an inch or two per year.
02:03 If it were to suddenly start rising very quickly,
02:06 that might be another indicator.
02:08 - Do not let that discourage you, though.
02:11 Yellowstone remains a spectacular destination.
02:13 Its volcanic secret is what fuels
02:16 the park's geothermal natural scenery that visitors enjoy.
02:20 Reporting for AccuWeather, I'm Chris Nellen.