Observations for 2020 May 25


The weather was finally clear and sunny. So went down basin to watch and wait for something. Ended up being Daisy, where it was the middle of the interval. Splendid was calm for the hour or so I waited there. I did see a couple of Pyramid eruptions, too. The duration of the Daisy eruption was only 3m10s, which seems to be continuing the trend of shorter durations. In years past it seemed like Daisy was regularly 3m40s.

After that, it was to Castle, since it was well over 13 hours since the major eruption last night. Only waited about five minutes for a start. It was strong the whole time, except for a series of pauses between four and six minutes.

Then it was over to Grand. Arrived to a full, steamy pool that slowly dropped. The Turban duration was well over six minutes, which makes me suspect we missed a Delay. That the next Turban interval had almost no overflow tends to confirm that.

Grand erupted on the next opportunity, with Turban taking almost a minute to join in. After yesterday, we couldn't be sure what would happen when Grand quit after 9-1/4 minutes, but through the steam we could see the water over the vent, and we were finally, on the tenth try, rewarded with a second burst. Of course that meant that Vent & Turban had to quit.

West Triplet was overflowing heavily by then, and I did catch weak eruption, with lots of thumps, that lasted five minutes. Then it was a Bulger major eruption, and by the time that finished, it was only a few minutes until Vent & Turban restarted.

So because of that, I ended up seeing Beehive start as I passed by Sawmill. I didn't notice any steam to the left as Beehive was climbing in height, so I'm almost certain there was no Indicator. What isn't know is was that really an interval pushing four days, or were there some missed nighttime eruptions? In any case, the days of multiple Beehive eruptions in a day seem to gone for a while.

It was pointed out to us yesterday by Rebecca Roland that one of the vents at Spasmodic had a strange purple color to it. In the bright sunlight of this morning, this coloration was obvious. I think I walked past there once during the last few gray days, and I don't remember seeing anything like this. It looks like some sort of dye. It might be from some trash, as there is what appears to be paper right up next to the vent. In any case, I doubt it is natural, as that pool is intermittent, and when not empty, it's near boiling.

The wait for the next Grand eruption was similiar to the morning. Arrived to a heavily overflowing pool and the subsequent Turban eruption was a long one. The next Turban eruption had no overflow. Unfortunately, the One Burst Grand eruption lasted just under 10 minutes.