Melting road at Yellowstone

[bltay]

This summer, in the hottest part of the year, the Park Service decided to try to smooth the roads by filling in the low spots with very thin tar. The road was never closed and the tar was not allowed to harden. Visitors were driving over soft wet tar and throwing it up on their car and spreading it everywhere. This is a very popular area for geyser watchers and the Park Service may have been trying to shortcut the process and keep the road open.

It certainly could come down to incompetence, partially or wholly.

What are your sources for this angle on it? So far we have two Yellowstone spokespersons describing this melting episode as "unusual".

It's currently reaching the mid-60s in the daytime there, so I don't think it being the "hottest part of the year" has anything to do with it.

I live near Yellowstone and spend most of my spare time since 1999 exploring this park. I see it in winter and summer. I did not personally watched these people try to repair this road, but I talked to people who did and I was unfortunate to drive my car through that muck. I know several other people who also drove through it and like myself, had to clean the tar off of their cars.

I do not know the source of your temperature info, but during early July it was in the lower 80's many days for high temperatures and I am pretty sure they picked one of the hottest days to attempt this road repair. After these last couple of days of unsettled off and on rain, temperatures are expected to be in the mid to upper 70's for highs.

The thin atmosphere at this altitude makes for little protection from the sun. Although the temps may not seem especially hot, the sun can really take a toll, which is just what it did on this road.

I don't know what your sources consider unusual, but there is no unusual thermal activity there. Great Fountain and other geysers in the area are not exhibiting any unusual behavior. The ground is not 'heating up'. The only unusual aspect of this is the way the park decided to repair the road.

 

[bltay]

Just to clarify a point in my previous post, the heat from the sun did not cause the asphalt to melt, but may have contributed to it staying in a liquid/melted state. The mistake was letting people drive continuously over wet/soft tar immediately after it was laid down.

 

[Niall]

Just to clarify a point in my previous post, the heat from the sun did not cause the asphalt to melt, but may have contributed to it staying in a liquid/melted state. The mistake was letting people drive continuously over wet/soft tar immediately after it was laid down.

Yeh, the air temps seem to be irrelevant. They said the temperature on the road itself was 160F. Meanwhile we see remaining winter snow on the ground next to it.

I don't know what your sources consider unusual

The extent to which it melted? The speed at which it melted? I dunno.

there is no unusual thermal activity there. Great Fountain and other geysers in the area are not exhibiting any unusual behavior. The ground is not 'heating up'.

Are you sure?

On the move? Scientists discover geothermal activity outside Yellowstone zone

Yellowstone National Park: Land is rising, and helium emissions increase

Yellowstone geyser erupts for first time in years

Yellowstone National Park: Large magma reservoir gets bigger

Yellowstone Geysers Become Active Again After Dormant Periods

Yellowstone super volcano is even bigger than first thought

More than 1,200 tiny quakes hit Yellowstone Park

Yellowstone is an active volcanic region, so it's hard to gauge all this against long-term background activity.

What stands out for me though, from the pov of a newshound, is that the media, govt, and authorities in general, typically play down anything that might seem out of the ordinary in our environment.

On the tip of everyone's tongue these days, wrt to Yellowstone, is awareness that there's a 'supervolcano that could blow any time'. I can't dispute your take on the road melting - incompetency is very plausible. But for the 'official position' to 'play into' this fear would be an unusual stance. What usually happens is that someone is found to blame, and if no one is found, they invent a scapegoat. They could easily have blamed shoddy and poorly timed road repairs, but they didn't.

Instead the official position on this is that geothermal activity caused the road to melt from below, and in a way that they reported was "unusual". Alone it doesn't mean much, I think. Yellowstone probably isn't 'going to blow' anytime soon. But in the global context of 'Earth opening up' in numerous ways across the planet - sinkholes swallowing folks alive, increased earthquakes, previously dormant volcanoes waking up, underwater subsidence, etc - this may be another sign of the times.

 

[bltay]

Just to clarify a point in my previous post, the heat from the sun did not cause the asphalt to melt, but may have contributed to it staying in a liquid/melted state. The mistake was letting people drive continuously over wet/soft tar immediately after it was laid down.

Yeh, the air temps seem to be irrelevant. They said the temperature on the road itself was 160F. Meanwhile we see remaining winter snow on the ground next to it.

I went down that road today. There is no winter snow in that area. What you are probably seeing is the very light colored geyserite minerals from the thermals which has a high percentage of silica.

I don't know what your sources consider unusual

The extent to which it melted? The speed at which it melted? I dunno.

Not meaning any disrespect, but I think you are missing the point. It did not melt. Thin wet tar was placed on the road's surface and was never hard. Cars were allowed to drive through it wet. There was no melting. If there were melting from heated land surface, the road would have been melted from the bottom up and several inches of asphalt would have just grabbed hold of cars and they would have been stuck in place. Asphalt would have been running like liquid off to the sides of the paved area. Look at the picture on SOTT. Only the surface was wet and cars could still drive through it because there was a hard surface underneath.

As I said, I was on that road today. What they have done is scrape the surface tar off the top. The road is still intact and still bumpy. This would not be the case if it had melted from below.

Also, if this ground were actually heating up, they would keep that area closed to the public just as they did when Norris Geyser basin heated up in 1993. That road opened again for public use after they scraped the wet tar off the surface of the road.

there is no unusual thermal activity there. Great Fountain and other geysers in the area are not exhibiting any unusual behavior. The ground is not 'heating up'.

Are you sure?

On the move? Scientists discover geothermal activity outside Yellowstone zone

What I said was that there was no unusual activity by geysers on that road area. Great Fountain Geyser, Pink Cone Geyser, White Dome Geyser, Narcissus Geyser, etc. are all behaving quite "normally." Normally is in quotes because geyser behavior does change. These geysers in that area are sticking to their usual eruption patterns and water volumes. Any new thermal activity outside the park would not affect this area. Geothermal activity is a surface activity, and should only be read in context of the area where it occurs.

Yellowstone National Park: Land is rising, and helium emissions increase

Land in Yellowstone is always rising and falling. It is moving at the rate of 1 inch per year over the hotspot and this movement will cause changes in thermal activity, earthquakes, etc. This hotspot can be traced from the western Oregon-Nevada-California across the continent to its present position. There have been many supervolcano eruptions during this movement, many larger than the Yellowstone eruptions.

There are 2 areas called resurgent domes in Yellowstone: The Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome. These are areas which were pushed up several hundred feet by the underground lava. If these areas are not exhibiting any unusual activity, I would not attribute the rise and fall of a few centimeters any great significance.

I found the helium reports interesting until I found out that it was old news recently released. I cannot source that right now so take it for what it is worth.

Yellowstone geyser erupts for first time in years

This is totally meaning less in the grand scheme of things. Not only do geysers routinely start and stop, there eruption characteristics can change with time. For example, Plume geyser erupted for many years and quit in January 2012. Giant Geyser has periods of dormancy, but it came alive and erupted every 7 to 10 days for 3 years 2005-2007. It has been dormant since. Victory Geyser erupted from a hole in the ground several times in 1999 and then turned into a pool of water. Suddenly in 2009 it erupted for about a month and returned to being just a pool of water. Steamboat Geyser, the largest in the world, had a 50 year dormany and then came back to life. It erupted last summer after being quiet for 8 years. I could list many examples of geysers coming and going and this happens for many reasons, sometimes the reason is not known. The SOTT article about Giantess Geyser erupting after being quiet for 2.5 years is true, but in Yellowstone it is not unusual. Go to _http://www.geyserstudy.org/oldsite/index.htm or _http://geysertimes.org and you can see the history of many geysers and how many have come and gone. Or try Scott Bryan's The Geysers of Yellowstone (considered the bible for geyser enthusiasts) and see the history of many geysers come and gone. These records are maintained by private citizens. There are people who spend time in the park and know a lot more about what is happening there than any Park Service or government employee.

One thing that makes Yellowstone so fascinating is that there is always something changing.

Yellowstone National Park: Large magma reservoir gets bigger

What happened is that they found it was bigger than previously thought by using modern sensing equipment. To say the hotspot is growing in size is a misquote of the actual study.

Yellowstone Geysers Become Active Again After Dormant Periods

See previous statement.

Yellowstone super volcano is even bigger than first thought

See previous statement.

More than 1,200 tiny quakes hit Yellowstone Park

No news here. Yellowstone averages 100 quakes a day. This is an average. Sometimes more, sometimes less. If the 7.5M quake of 1959 did not set it off, I doubt anything will.

Yellowstone is an active volcanic region, so it's hard to gauge all this against long-term background activity.

What stands out for me though, from the pov of a newshound, is that the media, govt, and authorities in general, typically play down anything that might seem out of the ordinary in our environment.

I agree that they do this. However, this has caused things that are perfectly normal for Yellowstone to be taken way out of context and extremely sensationalized. For example: the bison on the road youtube video. During the Spring and Fall you can see bison on the road 7 days a week. At least half of that time you can see them trotting or running. The people that know Yellowstone were almost literally ROTFLTAO (if you will excuse the language) over the video of bison 'rushing to leave the park'.

On the tip of everyone's tongue these days, wrt to Yellowstone, is awareness that there's a 'supervolcano that could blow any time'. I can't dispute your take on the road melting - incompetency is very plausible. But for the 'official position' to 'play into' this fear would be an unusual stance. What usually happens is that someone is found to blame, and if no one is found, they invent a scapegoat. They could easily have blamed shoddy and poorly timed road repairs, but they didn't.

Yes, this is true. But then someone would have to take the blame for making such a stupid decision, and that is not going to happen with government or any subdivision thereof. So they found another way to try to save face. Who wants to admit they made a bonehead decision which closed a popular area of a national park and at the same time wasted taxpayer's money? Yet the facts don't fit the story. The road is still there. People are using it. If it had melted from the bottom up, there would be no road. What was incredible was that one report said that the gravel "turned to oatmeal." Now I don't know for sure what temp melts gravel, but that never happened at all.

Instead the official position on this is that geothermal activity caused the road to melt from below, and in a way that they reported was "unusual". Alone it doesn't mean much, I think. Yellowstone probably isn't 'going to blow' anytime soon. But in the global context of 'Earth opening up' in numerous ways across the planet - sinkholes swallowing folks alive, increased earthquakes, previously dormant volcanoes waking up, underwater subsidence, etc - this may be another sign of the times.

I agree with you completely that I, nor anyone else, cannot say that Yellowstone will not erupt tomorrow. But this road issue is nothing more than government bungle. You guys are doing a great job reporting these earth changes, but this one instance is something I know about personally and felt obligated to set the record straight. I can only tell what I know and am not trying to force my opinion on anyone. Please accept all my previous statements as prefaced by"in my opinion."

 

[Niall]

I went down that road today. There is no winter snow in that area. What you are probably seeing is the very light colored geyserite minerals from the thermals which has a high percentage of silica.

Ah, that makes sense.

Not meaning any disrespect, but I think you are missing the point. It did not melt. Thin wet tar was placed on the road's surface and was never hard. Cars were allowed to drive through it wet. There was no melting. If there were melting from heated land surface, the road would have been melted from the bottom up and several inches of asphalt would have just grabbed hold of cars and they would have been stuck in place. Asphalt would have been running like liquid off to the sides of the paved area. Look at the picture on SOTT. Only the surface was wet and cars could still drive through it because there was a hard surface underneath.

As I said, I was on that road today. What they have done is scrape the surface tar off the top. The road is still intact and still bumpy. This would not be the case if it had melted from below.

Also, if this ground were actually heating up, they would keep that area closed to the public just as they did when Norris Geyser basin heated up in 1993. That road opened again for public use after they scraped the wet tar off the surface of the road.

They're re-poened it already! Ok, I think you're right: they were blaming nature for their own incompetence. Amazing that no one in the media - mainstream or alternative - has seen that yet. You should totally write an article about it: that's a scoop!

Yellowstone National Park: Large magma reservoir gets bigger

What happened is that they found it was bigger than previously thought by using modern sensing equipment. To say the hotspot is growing in size is a misquote of the actual study.

Yellowstone Geysers Become Active Again After Dormant Periods

See previous statement.

Yellowstone super volcano is even bigger than first thought

See previous statement.

Ok, so the media has been sensationalizing discoveries that are exclusively due to improved sensing technology?

More than 1,200 tiny quakes hit Yellowstone Park

No news here. Yellowstone averages 100 quakes a day. This is an average. Sometimes more, sometimes less. If the 7.5M quake of 1959 did not set it off, I doubt anything will.

The 'official' average is 1,600 quakes on average per year, so I guess they need to update that.

 

[Ronnie]

Well Done Bitay...
Thank You, for your time and effort bringing truth to this lamestream, teleprompter reading, mockingbird, nationwide propaganda piece. Your were on the spot and spot on. It's a drop in the bucket. But,... Thank You!

 

[bltay]

Ok, so the media has been sensationalizing discoveries that are exclusively due to improved sensing technology?

First I need to make a correction to my previous post. Norris Geyser Basin was closed due to heated ground in 2003, not 1993. I want to be accurate on all of this and I apologize for that mistake.

Kniall the answer to that question is a difficult one. For example, here is a pretty fair treatment of what the study said:

_http://www.livescience.com/28821-yellowstone-supervolcano-bigger-plume.html

Notice it did not mention the magma chamber was growing, only that it was larger than previously thought. The written word can be construed/misconstrued by the reader in many ways. If someone reads that article, they could possibly misunderstand its meaning and jump to the conclusion that the magma chamber has actually increased in size. Or the media, needing sensationalism to sell, purposely twists the meaning to sell its product by creating 'fear' news.

People are sensationalizing Yellowstone all the time. For example, there is a guy named Tom Lupshu who does this routinely on youtube. His latest was news about a sinkhole sighting in Yellowstone and a possible evacuation of the area. See

_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpk5Aojo_J0

At the time this sinkhole was supposedly sighted near some unspecified thermal feature, Yellowstone Park was closed. There were no visitors and no park employees in the park. The only people in the park were some construction workers at the Lake Hotel for remodeling, and the road snow removal crew. I doubt they reported any such sinkhole because they worked on and it was business as usual. After the park opened, no such sinkhole was ever found. I don't know if Lupshu is being played, or if he is just looking for attention. It is hard to figure. Playing on the fear people have of Yellowstone erupting is a good way to get attention. There are other examples of this that I could give if you really want some, but this gives you the idea.

Here is a study showing that Yellowstone may actually be cooling, but it does not fit the sensationalism the media needs and was probably never reported in the mainstream media:

_http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1717/downloads/pdf/p1717I.pdf

Yellowstone is such a fascinating area that I could go on and on about it, but I hope this helps to convey what I see as happening here.

 

[bltay]

Well Done Bitay...
Thank You, for your time and effort bringing truth to this lamestream, teleprompter reading, mockingbird, nationwide propaganda piece. Your were on the spot and spot on. It's a drop in the bucket. But,... Thank You!

Ronnie, First I want to say you are welcome. Next I want to thank you. This is because I have an overly deep seated fear that my intent will not come across properly in my writing, so thanks for that acknowledgement.