Yellowstone National Park Earthquakes Swarm is Over

Posted by Alexandra Matiella Novak Jan 9, 2009

I recently wrote a story about Earthquake Swarms at Yellowstone National Park. I was checking in with our friends at the USGS to see how the monitoring of this activity is progressing and they are now reporting that it has decreased substantially and may ever be over.

The USGS has also posted a very informative podcast on their website featuring Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Scientist-in-Charge Jacob Lowenstern. You can listen to this podcast at the USGS CoreCast website.

I got a few questions on the article I wrote about the earthquake swarms about what it means for future volcanic activity in the park or future earthquake activity in California. Well, just Iike I said in my responses to these questions, it's really hard to tell. Whatever was causing these earthquake swarms seems to have gone away, or maybe it's just quiet for now. Whatever the case, there's probably more questions about the future of Yellowstone now than there were before. One thing most geologists can agree on though: it's highly unlikely that there will be another VEI 8 eruption of Yellowstone - like there was 642,000 years ago - anytime in the near future.