Observations for 2011 August 07
As it turned out, the monitor said that I could have gone out an only waited an hour for the middle of the night Grand eruption, but getting some sleep was more important.
Not knowing that, I did head out on the assumption that a 16-hour double interval was not unreasonable, and as it turned out, I was right. Got out just in time to see West Triplet ending a long eruption in which Rift acted like it wanted to erupt, but didn't. The wait after that was only about 90 minutes for another two burst eruption. So this trip I've seen as many multiple bursts in the first 24 hours as I did in the first week of the previous trip.
But of course that couldn't last. For the afternoon wait, it quickly became apparent that Grand was going to wait for the next West Triplet, and since the system was recovering from Rift, that meant a bit of a wait. One that started out in the sun, but turned cloudy with a few sprinkles. Then the clouds thickened and the rain became stronger, but never quite enough to be really annoying.From the radar maps, it looked like this little storm was actually building directly over us and was also headed southward rather than the usual northeasterly direction. Finally the rain stopped, and the sun tried to come out, but never did manage it.
That wait also featured a couple of Daisy eruptions, as well as the unexpected announcement that Beehive's Indicator was in eruption. As it turned out, that Indicator lasted at least 26 minutes, and coupled with the 11-1/2 hour interval for Beehive, bodes not well for false Indicators in the coming weeks.
Finally, West Triplet started and still Grand didn't seem to want to take advantage of the situation. When Grand finally did erupt, it was on one of those extremely early fills and with strong waves in a full pool at the 15 minute mark. West Triplet quit within a couple of minutes of Grand's start, too. It was my first ten hour, one burst Grand of a trip in which I still expect to see more.
Walking away, I also saw an eruption of Oblong, only 3-1/2 hours after the earlier eruption I'd seen from Grand. The first seemed to be weak, with few surges that had any height, at least from my Grand vantage point.
There's a raven that seems to have developed a fascination with the vehicles in the Lower Ham's Store lot. It's been seen casing several vehicles there, including my truck. It also seems to have learned that the front of vehicles can be an essay source of large, dead bugs.