Observations for 2020 June 23


Rift started about the time we were tying up the bikes at Castle. Then we got a Turban delay. Grand overflowed heavily for about 20 seconds, and there were even some boops before the start. Then Turban took well over a minute to start, and Vent was 3m06s. It was the first One Burst Grand of this visit.

Afterwards, with Rift still erupting, Sput D and Percolator started up. Sput D appears to be much larger than last year's activity, and stronger. It stopped once, and so did Percolator, for about 30 seconds. That's something different that need to be confirmed. After the restart, I noticed a wet frying pan in the gravel at the site of Sputnik. It didn't last long, and I didn't stay around much longer.

After seeing a number of eruptions on the webcam, it was time to try and see Mugwump in person. So it was nice that it erupted within a couple of minutes of our arrival. The eruption lasted 25 seconds, and consisted of a number of large bursts that put out waves into the wash zone to the northwest of the vent. It was also preceeded by a burst from Three Crater, but was there so short a period of time that am not sure it was an isolated burst, or the last of a series.

Waited for another eruption, and started to piece together what to look for. After about ten minutes Three Crater started erupting. This consisted of a long series of distinct bursts about 5 to 10 seconds apart, ranging in height from a meter to maybe 2 or 3 meters high at times. There's a small spot of convection near the edge of the pool closest to the road. The activity from Three Crater made the surface of the pool rough, but it appeared that the convection died down while Three Crater was active. After Three Crater finally stopped, the activity inthat area slowly built up. Eventually there was a second area of convection well behind it in the pool. When that activity picks up, that's when it's time to start the video recording. This eruption looked like the previous, and even put a stream of water into some runoff channels.

The final eruption of Mugwump was different. It came on a shorter interval, lasted maybe ten seconds, didn't reach much height, and the water never made it into the wash zone. Others have reported only seeing these small eruptions, none of the bigger ones. So there appear to be some modes in the behavior which futher study will be needed to understand.