Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night keeps the engineers who service Yellowstone’s monitoring networks from reaching stations in every corner of the park.

I am a seismologist at the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO)—earthquakes are always on my mind. But this wasn’t always the case.

With new thermal features popping up frequently and old ones experiencing periods of activity and quiescence, have you ever wondered how Yellowstone National Park keeps it all straight? Sometimes it’s tricky!

As flames, spatter, and lava flows erupted from the north and south vents in Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit of Kīlauea on the night of September 30, 2026, magma was also making a new path below the surfac...

In early September, monitoring capabilities in Yellowstone received a significant boost with the renewal of the Yellowstone Lake camera and the installation of a new monitoring station at Geyser Hill,...

During a two-week trip to American Samoa in August and September, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) staff repaired and serviced the volcano monitoring network and conducted joint K-12 outreach w...

Recent collaborative research into past climate of Yellowstone’s Lower Geyser Basin has revealed some surprises about how the area has changed over the past many millennia. And it has lessons for how ...

Beginning with episode 5 in January, 2025, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has been issuing forecast windows for when the next lava fountain will occur in Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit of Kīlauea. ...

Hold onto your hats and sunglasses—and your trash! Yellowstone National Park’s Geology team collects anything lost or left behind by visitors in the park’s hydrothermal areas, leading to some pretty i...

Kīlauea has drawn huge crowds to witness the lava fountaining episodes from its summit crater of Halemaʻumaʻu since December 2024, with many visitors hiking trails and visiting overlooks to watch the ...

The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is not only responsible for monitoring and studying Yellowstone, but also volcanic systems throughout southwestern United States. Arizona hosts multiple volcanic fi...

Rocks have a variety of colors that result from the minerals and chemical elements they contain and from their internal structure. Some names of rocks and stones reflect their color. That’s why Yellow...

In July, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) scientists visited an exposure of tephra and lava flows in the western wall of Kaluapele. The layers were exposed by the 2018 summit collapse and hold ...

Yellowstone National Park is rightly famous for spectacular geysers. It also has hot springs that create thumps you can hear and feel!

Supereruptions are often imaged to be massive instantaneous events. New geological evidence from Yellowstone, however, shows that these eruptions are more complex and might involve numerous smaller pu...

Ocean swells are constantly beating on the ocean floor. This nonstop drumming creates continuous signals that travel through the Earth and are recorded on seismometers. Changes in the speed of these o...

Although earthquakes present a major geologic hazard for humans, they may be key in the long-term survival of subsurface microbial communities.

Kīlauea’s current summit eruption started on December 23, 2024. Fifty-two episodes of lava fountains have happened on average every 11 days, and we still have many questions about this eruptive behavi...

In response to the June 13, 2026, hydrothermal explosion at Biscuit Basin, a new camera was installed to track activity over a broader area than had previously been possible.

Although not as dramatic as past explosive eruptions at Yellowstone, Idaho is home to several young volcanic eruptions. Geologists are currently evaluating whether many of these young eruptions should...

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) relies heavily on Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) data to monitor volcanic activity in Hawaii. Data are collected by a combination of permanent stations ...

At least 28 rhyolitic lava flows, domes, and tuffs erupted since the formation of Yellowstone Caldera 631,000 years ago. Yellowstone’s past also includes multiple glacial periods. Are the eruptions an...

USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) staff are often asked, “Will lava erupted during the ongoing Kīlauea summit eruption in Halemaʻumaʻu eventually flow out of the caldera? And if so, when?” The a...

Hydrocarbons in Yellowstone? Yes indeed, there are oil seeps in the northeastern part of the park! These seeps are a consequence of the region’s long and complex geological history.

Island of Hawaiʻi residents may have felt shaking recently from large, deep earthquakes. Deep earthquakes like this have been recorded since the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) first started m...

The Howard Eaton Trail, once spanning 157 miles, was the longest hiking and equestrian trail in Yellowstone National Park for nearly 50 years. Today, the remnants of that trail cover roughly a sixth o...

Hawaii, the 50th state, reached a golden anniversary last Saturday, June 27. Surprise, it’s the 50th fountaining episode of the ongoing episodic eruption in Halemaʻumaʻu at the summit of Kīlauea.

Heat is everywhere—from the boiling hot springs and fumaroles of Yellowstone to the fast-paced action of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. In both settings, scientists and analysts use heat maps to visua...

In 2025, Professor Bruce Houghton retired from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa after 25 years as the Gordon A. Macdonald Chair of Volcanology. He was only the second person to hold the position in ...

Early on the morning of Saturday, June 13, 2026, a small hydrothermal explosion occurred at Biscuit Basin in Yellowstone National Park. Although smaller than the explosion that occurred in the same area in 2024, it emphasizes the dynamic and hazardous nature of hydrothermal activity in the region.

Over the last year and a half, the historic episodic eruption at the summit of Kīlauea has had 49 episodes of lava fountaining, with episode 50 in the forecast for next week. But why are these individ...

In the far southwest corner of Lower Geyser Basin is Imperial Geyser—a colorful pool that is also a perpetual spouter. The feature seems to have formed in 1927 and for a time was the most spectacular ...

April marked the 100-year anniversary of Mauna Loa’s 1926 Southwest Rift Zone eruption. This eruption is most remembered for the destruction of Ho‘ōpūloa village, a few miles north of Miloliʻi Bay. It...

The Teton Range, just south of Yellowstone National Park, is the youngest mountain range in the Rockies, and possibly North America. The forces that built (and are still actively building) the Tetons ...

As you walk along Crater Rim Trail from Wahinekapu (Steaming Bluffs) heading towards the Uēkahuna overlook in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, you’ll notice far less green vegetation and foliage than ...

Where in the U.S. can you find the highest concentration of recently (

More than 7,000 people across the State of Hawaii submitted “Did You Feel It?” (DYFI) reports to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) after the magnitude-6 earthquake that struck on Friday, May 22, at 9:...

The lava fountains that erupted a week ago, on Thursday May 14, marked the 47th episode of the ongoing Halemaʻumaʻu eruption. This episode tied the 1983-1986 initial phase of the Pu‘u‘ō‘ō eruption, wh...

With the arrival of Memorial Day and the unofficial start of the summer travel season, we take a look at the most common questions that visitors to Yellowstone’s thermal basins ask the park’s interpre...

The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is turning 25 years old! Surprisingly, the seeds for the observatory were planted at Lassen Volcanic National Park, almost 1,000 miles to the southwest.

Over the past month, the frequency of fountaining events at the summit of Kīlauea has increased to nearly one per week. This is reminiscent of the early days of the current episodic eruption that bega...

Mike Stickney was a one-person earthquake hazards show in Montana for 45 years and a valuable contributor to the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. His retirement in 2025 is a good excuse to celebrate h...

This past March, a team of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists—two of whom travelled from Hawaii—visited El Salvador in Central America for volcanological field studies and a workshop on lava flo...

Hydrothermal explosions are notoriously hard to predict. But a geological thermometer based on hot spring chemistry might help.

We are used to seeing eruptions from the summit region of Kīlauea contained to the region that is referred to as Halemaʻumaʻu. Halemaʻumaʻu, home of Pele, is a crater situated within the larger, steep...

In a recent study, scientists used several novel methods to measure the volume of water erupted from the iconic Old Faithful Geyser. The average volume of water from 45 eruptions was 27.9 cubic meters...

Thríhnúkagígur is a volcano near Reykjavík in Iceland with an empty magma chamber decorated with vivid colors that scientists and tourists can access via an open cable elevator.

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) detected an increase in shallow seismicity and localized ground deformation beneath the south rim of Halemaʻumaʻu crater, in Kīlauea summitʻs south caldera ...

Determining the ages of hydrothermal explosions in Yellowstone is difficult because traditional dating methods often don’t work on those deposits. But an emerging application of a technique called lum...