Background – During late June and early July, Jeremy and I went on a road trip to Banff, Canada, where we also visited the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Historic Site, Lake Louise, Johnston Canyon, Whitefish, Grand Tetons, Jackson, Bozeman, and Yellowstone National Park (the latter 4 places are all in Montana).
In Yellowstone National Park, Jeremy and I waited about 20 minutes for Old Faithful geyser to erupt. This 1st video is the “false alarm.” According to Wikipedia, “Old Faithful is a cone geyser located in Wyoming, in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Old Faithful was named in 1870 during the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition and was the first geyser in the park to receive a name. It is also called the most predictable geographical feature on Earth erupting almost every 91 minutes. The geyser, as well as the nearby Old Faithful Inn, is part of the Old Faithful Historic District.”
In this 2nd video below, Old Faithful erupted for about 5 minutes and we actually made a quick get-a-way to our car before the eruption ended. The crowds and traffic congestion in the parking lot made this a good idea.
Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet lasting from 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet. The highest recorded eruption was 185 feet. Intervals between eruptions can range from 45 to 125 minutes, averaging 66.5 minutes in 1939, slowly increasing to an average of 90 minutes apart today.
More than 137,000 eruptions have been recorded. Old Faithful is not the tallest or largest geyser in the park; that title belongs to the less predictable Steamboat Geyser. Its popularity is more likely due to the small eruption window and high frequency.
