Explosion sends tourists running at Yellowstone National Park’s Biscuit Basin

SALT LAKE CITY — A seismologist at the University of Utah said hydrothermal explosions like the one caught on camera at Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin early Tuesday happen as often as twice a year at the park, but scientists are working to better predict them.

Jamie Farrell, research associate professor at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and chief seismologist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, told KSL TV that some equipment had already been installed in another area of the national park to study the phenomena, and the plan is now to install more around Biscuit Basin following the explosion that sent tourists running.

“These hydrothermal explosions are, you know, what we call an ‘underappreciated’ hazard,’” Farrell said. “Sometimes you can get excess pressure building up underground and when that happens, that water can just flash to steam and cause a big explosion.”

Farrell said the hydrothermal explosions have historically happened in less-traveled areas of Yellowstone and they are rarely documented by people.

He said, however, he had witnessed a smaller explosion in the same area 15 years earlier.

“They can get really big and very destructive,” Farrell acknowledged. “I think we got lucky this morning in that nobody got hurt in this.”

Tuesday’s explosion shut down the area and left behind significant damage.

Farrell said what happened shouldn’t alarm anyone about any larger potential volcanic activity at the park.

He said he planned to travel to Yellowstone in the coming days to survey the site, and ultimately through the equipment installed there, scientists hoped to learn more about how the explosions work and if there are signals that can predict them so people can be warned ahead of time.

“We get reminders every once in a while that there are things that we have no control over,” Farrell said.