Geyser Notes

Last night’s Grand eruption was so early that the odds were that the next eruption would take place before dawn, and I wasn’t looking forward to that. So I decided instead to rest up after yesterday’s hike and get a good night’s sleep. Was not surprised to learn that not only did no one see the early Grand, but the NPS never bothered to announce the time recorded by their monitor. Since it seemed that the interval overnight wasn’t a long one, I decided that 13 hours (two 6h30m intervals) would be a good time to go out.

Got to Grand and found that the prediction sign had nothing on it,other than today’s date. Turban itself was acting a bit different, in that it was having medium length durations, and several cases of low pool waves before obviously dropping. The eruption itself was nice in the sunset, and lasted well over 11 minutes. Surprisingly, Vent and Turban didn’t stop. During the eruption, it took four tries before they finally were able to understand the Grand start time.

Now this leads to another radio rant: Here’s the one time that the NPS can return the favors that everyone else does for it. The one time that the monitor time would have been useful. And they blew it. This is why I want nothing to do with providing them times, because they provide so little in return for all the help gazers have given them. Let ’s not forget the times when Grand has a long interval, and all of us at Grand get to hear, “Has anyone information about Grand?” I really don’t care that they are busy and miss things. There are ways to alleviate that problem, that I’ve detailed in the past, but they’ll never suggest any, and if gazers tried to impose any, the NPS would balk. I just wish more gazers would ignore them, too.

In the evening, walked up onto the end of an eruption of West Triplet, and Rift starting. Wasn’t paying close attention, so didn’t notice that it was a short Rift eruption until well after it had ended. At most, the eruption lasted twenty minutes. But it had its eftects, and Grand waited for two hours before it finally erupted. The series of Turban eruptions was of the variety where the durations keep getting shorter until Grand goes after a very short eruption.

There was just enough light to see the waves on the pool, and to see Vent overflow. Then Grand had a boil, Turban started explosively, and finally Grand jetted to start the first burst. Grand has been having slowdowns between seven and nine minutes into the eruption, and this was no exception. I thought the burst had stopped, but it picked back up. Unlike the old “false pause”, these slowdowns usually don’t even have a sharp jet to conclude them. So we ended up with a one burst eruption lasting less than ten minutes. For me, that’s now seven one burst eruptions in a row.

During the waits for Grand, did get to see something different. The first time there were two deer on the hillside behind Grand, and for the evening there was one. Not sure if it was one of the earlier two or a third. In any case,that’s more deer seen in this one day that I’ll see in several years.