Melted roads, the strongest earthquake in more than 30 years, spiking gas emissions from hot springs, animals purportedly “fleeing” the park’s boundaries — all those events must be signs that the supervolcano lying dormant beneath Yellowstone National Park is poised for the first eruption in 70,000 years, right?
Wrong. As the head of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, Jacob B. Lowenstern, told The Billings Gazette, there’s no “abnormal” activity going on beneath Yellowstone.
“The probability of a large … eruption within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low,” a USGS report concludes.
But say the supervolcano were to erupt today, what sort of impacts would the United States experience? Thanks to new research from the USGS we finally have some answers, and the findings are decidedly grim.
(Read the rest of the story here…)