Watch Yellowstone’s New Boiling Pool Spring To Life

Concern about the Yellowstone supervolcano is brought up from time to time, especially now that social media is such a prominent part of our daily lives. There's always an influencer, or troublemaker, who tries to freak people out.

Honestly, for me, it's just incredible to learn about. It's been thousands of years since a major eruption occurred, but there are still some interesting things that happen there quite regularly.

Most recently, a new boiling pool formed after a small hydrothermal explosion in the Biscuit Basin area of Yellowstone National Park a couple of weeks ago. According to the USGS, the pool is about 6.5 × 5.3 meters (21 × 17 feet) in size and formed by collapse, as indicated by the lack of surrounding ejecta. The formation time is uncertain, but it must have been between the afternoon of Sunday, June 14, and the morning of Tuesday, June 16.

It's interesting that one day you can be there and there's nothing going on, and then the next day you can go back, and there's a whole new boiling pool that has developed. It's crazy how quickly things can change.

This newly developed pool saw more activity just before 9 a.m. on June 23, when an eruption sent steam and dirty water into the air. This particular eruption is the first to be observed by the USGS, which has a camera fixed on the pool, since June 18, when water was seen spouting from the ground.

You can watch the video of the eruption on the USGS Facebook page; it's certainly interesting to see the explosion unfold.