Observations for 02 August 2018
Updated: 2018 Aug 09: Uploaded video at Fan Minor 2018 Aug 02.
Went out after midnight for the next hot period and managed to miss all sorts of geysers.
Didn't know it at the time, but Oblong erupted just before we arrived at the Bijou Cage. In the short while we were there, Grand and Beehive erupted (we did see the first), then shortly after we left, it was Castle's turn.
One piece of entertainment was finding a rental car parked next to the bike trail in front of the Inn. I contacted the NPS to report it, but it was still there when we returned to the Cage in daylight.
In the morning, was surprised to get a second minor Feather-only hot period. The timing fit, but the type of eruption didn't. That again reset things for a while.
Just before time to head back again, at Fan & Mortar, we saw something I have never seen before-- a Fan minor eruption. The buildup was identical to a full Fan & Mortar eruption, but once we got to the stage where High vent was erupting continuously to 15 feet or more, it just stayed that way for about 10 minutes. The end came suddenly, and within a minute, the vents looked the way it does as a cycle is dying down. Once again, will post some video once I leave the land of the cloud.
Then it was back to the Cage, where, instead of a long wait, almost immediately there was a medium-strong hot period. This time, there was some strong surging in Giant, and the water level looked to be better than previous times, but that activity came late in the restart, and obviously didn't result in the desired eruption. This was the shortest interval between hot periods I've seen this trip, 3h20m. Makes estimating the time to return even harder.
Turns out the Grotto eruption that started before this last hot period was still going, 5-1/2 hours later. The first mini-Marathon of the interval, and again, of my stay. When I arrived back around 18:30, Bijou looked a lot like it used to look after a marathon. It was in a perpetual slowdown punctuated by occasional short pauses. This activity continued for about three hours until there was a 2m50 second pause. It was shortly before that that Bijou regained its strength. In the dark, it made pauses easier to notice.
Pauses now came about every 12 minutes. Shortly before midnight, Grotto started. At 55 minutes into that eruption, at 00:51, well after midnight, we finally got the expected hot period. At 00:55, it was ten minutes over twelve from the previous one. This one looked a lot like the previous ones, the major difference being that Feather never quit. Once again, only once or twice did the surging in Giant look anything like it was trying to start, and these surges came after a lot of splashing.