Yellowstone National Park: An Active Mega Volcano

We all know what a volcano is. When thinking of one, you probably picture a huge mountain, smoke and ash spouting from it's top, lava pouring down the sides, and evacuation alerts posted all over the news. Perhaps you think of the tragedy in Pompeii or maybe you think of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Well, could you imagine an eruption 2,500 times as powerful as that one? It's not impossible.

There are active mega volcanoes all over the world and one lies right here in the United States under Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is believed to be sitting right on top of a huge magma chamber where molten mantel is rising to the surface. Yellowstone has supposedly erupted before (way before our time) and was so powerful that the lava had spread over huge areas of land in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Idaho.

The reason Yellowstone has so many geysers & hot springs is because of the huge magma chamber below the park. In fact, the molten material underneath is actually not very far from the surface.

Some scientists even say that it was a massive amount of mega volcano eruptions that killed the dinosaurs and not a meteor impact. They say that all of the ash and gases dispersed into the air is what caused the extinction. The gases would have caused a drastic and very quick climate change as well as kill plants and animals and ultimately screwing up the eco-system.

If Yellowstone were to erupt in our lifetime, it could possibly throw us into a new ice age. It would cause a catastrophic explosion and a huge caldera. The huge eruption could be capable of wiping out half of the western United States and causing ash to fall over the rest of the world, blocking sunlight, sending us into complete and utter darkness for an extremely long period of time. Without sunlight, plants would die and there would be all kinds of disease outbreaks and famine. The impact of the eruption could cause many natural disasters all over such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and even tsunamis.

A supervolcano eruption is very rare and usually only occurs every 1-2 million years. On the other hand, scientists believe that Yellowstone Park has been on an eruption cycle of 600,000 years and say that the last eruption was 640,000 years ago so the eruption would be overdue. The next eruption would be up to 2,500 times the size of Mount St. Helens. However, rest assured that the probability of Yellowstone erupting within the next few thousand years is low even though the land in Yellowstone Park rises an inch per year.