Posted on

Observations for 2019 August 25


Since I forget to take a look yesterday, this morning I stopped in to take a look at Giant's Platform. Nothing much changed there. I did seem some spits out of the frying pan behind the Southwest Vents, which themselves were noisy. But the water in front of Giant was probably from overnight sloshing in the vent, and Bijou tried but failed to have a pause.

At Grand, the Group is definitely in a mode where West Triplet is dormant. Before the morning's eruption, there was an eruption of Sput D, along with activity in Sputnik, Sput A, and Sput F2 shortly before the Turban eruption. Only the last time did West Triplet overflow, and that was with weak activity from Sput D. Then just before Grand's start, Sput D started again, strongly, along with West Triplet overflow, only to be drowned by Grand itself.

This was a nice two burst eruption, and was followed by the typical weak Sput D activity and strong West Triplet overflow. So it looks like the Grand Group has shifted to a mode it had for a during my previous visit back in July.

The afternoon eruption was similar. Sput D was active once a Turban interval, but it did skip one interval right after I arrived. The Grand eruption was a Turban Delay, and Sput D also delayed such that it started just before Turban finally started. Grand's pool looked poor at the start, but over the next one hundred seconds, it rose up and started having good waves. Sput D ended just as Grand started.

That eruption lasted less than ten minutes, and for about the last three really did live up to the "Big Sawmill" label. There was a strong wind at the time, but that shouldn't have been the reason for the small bursts and periods of not much more than boiling. Also, because it took so long for Grand to start after Turban, Vent started only one hundred seconds after Grand, which was to be expected. After the eruption, there was a weak eruption of Sput D, and strong overflow from West Triplet.