| Comments: | Absolutely incredible! WOW!
Seen from the upper platform.
It was relatively cold most of the day so I was not taking many notes. Radio call came in in the morning that there was nothing exciting going on. Seemed to be in a lull throughout the morning and into the afternoon. North vent was not doing much vertical the whole day, and any vertical seen was usually brief and not very tall. Verticals usually did not have follow ups, and a lot of the bigger minors were followed by a long pause. I noted brief vertical at 1008, 1032, 1042, & 1055. Nothing better than a woo though, and I did not take any more notes after that until the major. The energy surge that led to the eruption came on suddenly about 10 minutes prior with a long, concerted, thick minor with NV over 60' with a little vertical and SV at least 30' sustained vertical and a raging river. That was followed within a minute or two by another one much like it with a little vertical. Suzanne made the first warning call. The activity continued with long, tall, and thick concerted minors and little down time. A couple minutes later we had our first good NV vertical. A few more North verticals - which continued to get bigger and more frequent - and then a beautiful vertical shot over 100' (I lost it at this point), and the eruption followed immediately after. It was relatively steamy so it was hard to see where the top was. Wind was coming from the north. Water stayed clear the whole time. Lots of small white rocks. North switched to steam about three minutes in with a distinct change in noise, though I did not note that North was definitely in steam until about 12 minutes in. South continued water for some time after. It continued to have sprays mixed in with the steam more than 2h 30m in. Spikes above the steam plume observed from decker somewhere around an hour to an hour and a half in. Tom said this was a particularly loud eruption. Cistern down about 3" by 1820. |