Geyser Notes

It's been a while since I went out to Grand at night. With the shortened intervals of the last few days, decided to tempt fate until the next long delayed interval.

When I walked past Churn, I noticed that it was below overflow with a bit of a rim. I assume it erupted, but I didn't really miss it.

Arrived with Turban in eruption. There wasn't any overflow that I could hear before the next Turban eruption, about 15 minutes later. Grand erupted before the next Turban, and that interval was also short, about 17 minutes. Otherwise it was a normal One Burst Grand eruption, with an interval around 5-1/2 hours.

'Came out for the next eruption, and was amused to consider that I was arriving at around the 5h10m mark, and that I could be missing the eruption. But the pool was full. Again, there was a Turban eruption that was not preceeded by any audible or visible overflow. The next Turban eruption was less thatn 20 minutes later, and lasted less than four minutes. When Grand started, Turban preceeded it and the interval there was only about 17 minutes, and maybe a minute after I first heard the overflow.

The eruption itself was annoying in it's own way. The first burst ended abruptly at the 7-1/2 minute mark. When the second burst also ended in a reasonable amount of time, instead of lasting several minutes, I was sure I was about to see my first three (or more) burst Grand eruption in years. Instead, nothing happened. The total duration, including the pause, was just under nine minutes. Which in its way was probably close to a record for the least amount of water in a Grand eruption.

Midday I came out to find West Triplet in eruption, along with Sput D. This continued for thirty minutes, so the duration was even longer, and of course, that meant we got to see the start of Rift just as West Triplet ended.

The Turban intervals and durations were unremarkable until then. Then we got a couple of short Turban eruption durations (4m08s and 5m11s) and shorter intervals. Grand itself went only 17-1/2 minutes after Turban, but the overflow had started around the 15 minute mark. The One Burst Grand lasted just over ten minutes, and to play with us, had over a minute of the crater full and sloshing around. (There was a small contingent who were positioned to run to Beehive, ahead of the post Grand crowd, who had to wait this out.) When Vent & Turban did quit, the pause was only 8-1/2 minutes long.

Since Beehive was showing signs of being near erupting (the primary one being it was afternoon), I walked over to Geyser Hill. The Indicator started as I passed Liberty Pool, and this time it was so long that I was able to get there with plenty of time.

The fourth Grand of the day was preceeded by a Turban eruption with no overflow from Grand. That was followed by a delay. Unlike the night before, Grand went from heavy boil into a blue bubble to start the eruption. This time there wasn't any West Triplet activity while I was out there.

That left 6h10m for Grand to have a fifth eruption for the day. Based on recent intervals, that should be plenty of time. But based on past experience, I wouldn't count on it, as Grand does seem to have a tendency to toss in a long (in this case, about seven hour long interval) when you really want a short. (Like when you are packed and leaving, and want to get in that "one last Grand".)

The eruption this morning was in the dark, but this time the clouds parted and there was a nice first quarter moon illuminating the basin. I arrived in time for more anomalous Turban behavior. In this case, the strong overflow decreased as I waited, and was almost non-existent when Turban finally erupted 11 minutes later. I would guess that this was probably a delay, well before the five hour mark. But it wasn't much of a surprise to have Grand erupt on the next Turban, twenty minutes later. A pretty undistinguished One Burst Grand, with nothing from West Triplet again. The main negative is that it was too early, so there was some jerk with a bright light out there illuminating the eruption.

So I did see five eruptions of Grand in one day. In about a 22 hour period, with an hour padding on each side of the period of eruptions. I get the feeling, based on the behavior lately that there will be many more such opportunities in the next few weeks.