I remember visiting Yellowstone as a kid. We drove through the park in the family station wagon. Of course we stopped when the curious bears put their paws on the roof, hoping that we would give them something from our “picanick baskets.” We wisely kept the windows rolled up. (Yes, you used to have to actually roll your car windows up and down!)
We saw Old Faithful, the geyser which erupts every hour. My dad especially liked the rustic inn. Yellowstone was beautiful.
What I never realized is that the whole park is a super-volcano. A giant caldera. It erupts on average every 660,000 years. And it’s been over 660,000 years since the last eruption. In other words, it’s overdue to blow.
What happened the last time it blew?
The last eruption was a thousand times greater than Mt. St. Helens. It put enough ash out to bury the entire state of New York to a depth of 67 feet. The ash created splendid fossil beds in Nebraska. And when it blew last, Yellowstone wasn’t even in Wyoming!
The hot spot beneath the earth was actually in Idaho. This is because the Earth’s crust moves about an inch per year. (So…in another million years or so….the super-volcano will be over Billings, MT…and the folks in Wyoming will be harvesting potatoes.)
So, the next time you visit Yellowstone and are in awe of the grandeur…the flora and the fauna….remember that you are basically standing on a pile of TNT the size of Rhode Island….and to a depth of about 8 miles.
Nobody knows when it will next explode. But on that day, it will be a bad day for Yogi, Boo Boo and basically everybody else on the planet.
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