YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – A new hydrothermal feature has been discovered in Yellowstone National Park!
A park scientist spotted it after noticing a billowing steam rising up through the trees in an area known as “Roadside Springs” between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Geyser Basin. The feature was found on Aug. 5, 2024 and remained visible into the fall. Since then, the steam plume has disappeared.
“This new feature is at the foot of a rhyolite lava flow about 3 meters above the marsh below, and it lies within a swath of warm, hydrothermally altered ground that is approximately 60 meters (about 200 feet) long,” wrote the USGS. “Although this hydrothermal activity may seem new to us, it may also just be just the latest manifestation of activity a short distance away that kicked into existence more than two decades ago. On March 10, 2003, a similar type of hydrothermal activity was first observed on the other side of the same rhyolite lava flow where the new feature is located, just west of Nymph Lake.”
Yellowstone’s summer of 2024 was very busy, geologically speaking. There were hydrothermal explosions at Biscuit Basin (you probably saw the wild video) and in Norris Geyser Basin.
NATIONAL PARK NEWS
