How could flooding in Yellowstone National Park affect seismic and hydrothermal activity?

Last week, floods in Yellowstone caused catastrophic damage to the area, destroying homes, roads and bridges and isolating entire communities. Despite the scale of this event, the effects on seismic and hydrothermal activity are likely to be minor.

From June 10 to 13, 2022, a “river air” event – a system of extremely warm and humid air that typically originates in the tropics – hit the Yellowstone National Park region. More than 2-3 inches of rain, combined with warm temperatures overnight, melted a large amount of snow that had not previously melted due to a cold, snowy spring. The result was historic floods.

News channels and social media are filled with photos and videos showing the devastating effects of these floods. Some communities adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, such as the Gardiner and the Cook City area in southern Montana, have been completely isolated due to floodwaters and road damage. Electricity was cut off in many places, as was access to clean drinking water.

Yellowstone’s north and northeast entrance roads have been closed indefinitely, and Yellowstone National Park has been completely closed while the threat is assessed to visitor safety (current plans to reopen the southern half of the park on June 22). Recovery will likely take years, with new roads and bridges needed in several places. Parts of the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, which was hardest hit, may be closed for several months.

The level of flooding in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park and in southern Montana was literally unprecedented (see USGS press release) – a fact we know thanks to the long record of effective river monitoring.

The USGS has developed accurate methods for determining the amount of water flowing into the river, and in Yellowstone, the USGS manages the waterways on many of the rivers that flow out of the park. The stream flowing on the Yellowstone River in Corwin Springs, just north of Yellowstone National Park, has records going back to 1892!

These long-term data are essential for understanding the effects of events like this month’s flood and how often such events occur, and monitoring river systems is critical to predicting and warning of flood conditions. In addition to the flow, the USDA’s National Water and Climate Center operates an automated snow monitoring program – the SNOwpack TELemetry Network – and data from these stations indicates that there is a significant amount of snow on the ground when heavy rains fall in the area.

On June 13, the Yellowstone River’s water height at the Corwin Springs Scale reached about 14 feet – about 2.5 feet higher than the previous record flood event in June 1918. The discharge peaked at about 50,000 CFS (a provisional estimate under review), which was larger Far from the previous peak flow of around 32,000 CFS from 1918 and into the late 1990s.

This is a map of the locations of the SNOwpack dial gauge network (blue dots) and stream flow (red dots) in and around Yellowstone National Park. (Courtesy of Yellowstone Caldera Records)

These data indicate that the amount of water that flowed through the gauge in the four days between June 11 and June 15 (more than 70 billion gallons) would fill more than 100,000 Olympic swimming pools. If a football field had walls on all sides, those walls had to be three miles high to hold all that water.

Observation networks operated by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory remain largely intact, despite catastrophic damage to other infrastructure. Some of the main effects of heavy rains are landslides, and in the wake of the unprecedented rains and floods, many small landslides have occurred in different areas of the park. The power outage resulted in a temporary loss of data access from the Norris Geyser Basin, but electricity was restored after a few days.

Other seismic and ground deformation monitoring stations remain fully operational as they are located above river valleys and are solar and battery powered, transmitting data over radio links. River monitoring stations, including those that measure hot spring inputs, will need maintenance once the flood waters recede, as sensors may have been damaged or buried in sediment.

Will a historic flood cause any changes in seismic, hydrothermal or volcanic activity in Yellowstone National Park? Maybe not immediately, maybe not at all.

Most of the rain and thaw from recent floods ended up in the region’s rivers drying up, but some water seeped into the ground. There are general associations across the western United States between monsoon precipitation and small earthquakes caused by changes in surface loading (from snow and water) and groundwater recharge, but Yellowstone macro-seismic analysis does not show a strong association between heavy rainfall and strong earthquakes or earthquake swarms.

Seismic activity associated with increased subsurface pore pressure is mostly related to water ascending from depth, rather than percolating down from the surface. For example, the 2017 Maple Creek earthquake swarm – the second largest ever recorded in Yellowstone National Park – was likely driven by rising waters from deep reservoirs, increasing pore pressure and causing slippage on existing faults.

Yellowstone River level (left) and discharge (right) during June 9-16, 2022, measured in the Corwin Springs stream north of Yellowstone National Park. The previous record flood event at the site was in 1918, when the level was 11.5 feet and the discharge was measured at about 32,000 cubic feet per second. The floods of June 13, 2022 broke this record, with a level of about 14 feet and an initial discharge of about 50,000 cubic feet per second. Data from this site stretches back to 1892 and provides an exceptional example of the value of long-term monitoring for tracking, forecasting, and warning of flood events. (Courtesy of Yellowstone Caldera Records)

Hydrothermal eruptions are another danger in Yellowstone and occur when groundwater flashes to vapor below the surface. Such eruptions are unlikely to result from the recent floods. Flood events by themselves do not provide the trigger needed to cause groundwater to flash to steam. Alternatively, it may take an event such as a large local earthquake to rupture a hydrothermal system.

However, changes in geyser activity can result from changes in groundwater pressure. Based on data recorded between 1998 and 2006, it has been suggested that years with a lot of precipitation or snow lead to higher groundwater pressure shortening the cycles of the Old Faithful Geyser eruption by a few minutes. When there is less precipitation, geyser activity may decrease—recent research has found that Old Faithful was dormant during a prolonged drought, for example.

But not all heaters respond to precipitation. In Steamboat Geyser, no correlation was found between precipitation and geyser reactivation in 2018.

The flooding in Yellowstone last week was truly unprecedented, and the Observatory offers our heartfelt sympathies to those affected by the devastating event – especially the people who live and work in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park and in neighboring communities. While we don’t expect the flood to have an immediate or dramatic effect on seismic or hydrothermal activity in Yellowstone, and observatory monitoring systems remain in place, the consequences of the flooding for residents, park staff and visitors will be felt for years to come.

You can learn more about what causes floods, how often severe floods occur, and how peak flow is determined at the USGS Flood: Things to Know.

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Contribution this week from Michael Poland, USGS geophysicist and Yellowstone Observatory scientist, Shaul Horowitz and Blaine McCluskey, USGS geophysicists, and Erin White, Park hydrologist at Yellowstone National Park. .

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