Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser Now Erupting More Frequently

I must admit that I tend to be apprehensive about sharing news about what the geysers are doing in Yellowstone. The reason being that no matter what I share someone seems to want to tie it to the super volcano. That's likely to be the case here as Steamboat Geyser has started erupting much more frequently over the past few weeks.

If you're not as big a geyser nerd as I am, you may not be familiar with Steamboat. It was completely dormant for almost a decade from 2003 until it reawakened in July of 2013 as Wikipedia documents.

Steamboat Geyser set its all-time record for eruptions in a year in 2019 when it registered 48. It erupted at an interval between 1 and 2 weeks.

In 2020, Steamboat's activity seems to have changed. Geyser Times is a great site for following Steamboat eruptions. For the first few months, it maintained its 1 to 2 week interval. But, in May those intervals have become shorter and shorter. Here's what has transpired over the past few weeks.

April 27, it erupted after a 16 day interval
May 8, it erupted after a 10 day interval
May 14, it erupted after a 6 day interval
May 19, it erupted after a 5 day interval
May 23, it erupted after just a 3 day interval

I can already guess that many who expect a Yellowstone super volcano eruption will connect the increased activity of Steamboat into some sort of countdown to a major event. Is that possible? Sure. But, most USGS comments on Steamboat seem to infer that they don't believed increased activity is tied to a potential super volcano event.

Yellowstone Insider shared a story where they believe the increase in Steamboat activity is a part of a rise in the Norris Basin area. The USGS backed that theory up in a study they produced about Norris activity.

The only thing we can be certain of in regards to Yellowstone and the geysers is that they will continue to be unpredictable. Only time will tell if this is leading to something major.