Geyser Notes

Arrived at Norris at our usual time. It was three hours before there was any activity worthy of note. It was a nice, strong surge with the usual little bit of vertical to the right of the North Vent. Following that, about every half hour to hour there was a similar event, but in most cases there wasn't any followup. The next to last event was at 13:33.

The following event was about 45 minutes later. This one looked different from the beginning. It was stronger, thicker, and the vertical surging was definite and pronounced. Within moments, it built into the eruption start, at 14:15. I somehow managed to capture this on video, despite my efforts to screw it up. I'll post the video the middle of next week.

I waited too long to get a height measurement. By the time I got back to the bench, all I got was 50%, which works out to about 65 meters or about 210 feet. Still taller than any other geyser but Giant, but well below what it had been a few moments earlier. This was probably because of the wind direction causing much of the water to flow back into the North Vent. The water was already brown after about five minutes, and threatening to have a full choke. Unfortunately, that never happened. Most of the runoff was behind and toward Echinus. There were several new runoff channels forming over there, while nothing was going in west of the North Vent's runoff channel. That channel was practically dry for most of the eruption we saw.

Thanks to the wind direction, it was easy to see the base of the water columns and the vents for most of the eruption. At times it was obvious that there were several areas of forced steam around and in front of the South Vent. In addition, it was easily apparent that there is some sort of third vent to the right of the North Vent. The video I took shows this clearly.

Finally left the area after a couple of hours. The steam was mostly steady, but some chugging could be seen and heard when the wind shifted more toward the north.

In the Upper Basin, attempted to go out for a post-sunset, early moonlit eruption of Grand. But a thunderstorm moved in and we had no desire to get soaked by it, so headed in before the One Burst Grand eruption could happen.