Observations for 02 June


Having a one Turban wait at 03:00 is nice. It's just enough time to settle in and appreciate the cold, but not long enough to get cold.

A 9m10s one burst eruption of Grand, on the other hand, isn't nice, especially on a full moon night when the slight breeze is blowing the steam to the north and West Triplet hasn't started erupting yet. The only excuse Big Sawmill has is that it took 1m25s from the start of Turban to get going. I really do miss the good ol' days when a first burst of that length was disappointing because it meant you probably were only got to get a second.

So of course the next eruption interval from Grand has to be a long. A long that doesn't fit any pattern, that erupts over half an hour after West Triplet ends, and that has no Rift. The pattern of Turban eruptions was chaotic up to the point where it had what I call a Type 3 delay (I think that's what I called it. Ishould've checked my notes back home better): On a fairly short interval, Turban has a strong, short eruption (around 3m30s) without any indication that Grand wants to erupt. That is followed by an even shorter interval (around 16m30s) and Grand usually erupts on one of the next two Turban intervals. This time it took four.

As if in compensation, the first burst was less than 8 minutes long. And as if to compensate for for that, the second burst lasted 2m20s, negating any chance of a third. Then, despite Vent and Turban quitting, the afterplay was fairly strong for a few minutes.

Giant is back to having hourly weak to medium strength hot periods, but as this is only at two days since the previous eruption, I'm not going to get excited until Monday morning.

Beehive erupted, not-unexpectedly to anyone who's paying attention, in the afternoon before the thunderclouds rolled in. I heard Beehive from within my Lodge Cabin for almost two minutes before someone gave out a radio call. And even then, they backdated the "ie" time by a minute.

The transition from early Spring to early Summer sure was quick. A suddenly noisy and gray sky is something I associate with July and August.

Another summer characteristic of the thunderstorms was their persistence. When it came time for Grand, they started up again. Out at Grand, the sky to the north was partly blue, and to the west it looked like the current shower would be the last. Except this continued for well over an hour. IT was as if the storm was just sitting directly overhead. That the lightening all seemed to be between one and two miles away seemed to confirm this. At least it was a short wait at Grand, and it even gave a bonus burst after a first lasting over ten minutes.