Surprise geothermal explosion at Yellowstone: Precursor top Gog and Magog?
Tourists were forced to flee on Tuesday morning as Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin in Wyoming exploded, sending a column of boiling water, mud and rock into the air.
No injuries were reported but the area remains temporarily closed to visitors.
Vlada March, a tourist who recorded the event on her cellphone, told the New York Times that she was taking a guided tour with her family when the guide pointed out steam rising from the ground.
“‘Oh look,’ he said. ‘This is unusual.’ I took out my phone like everyone does. Suddenly it became a huge, dark cloud full of rocks,” she said in a phone interview. “It was a huge cloud, it covered the sun. For a few moments, you couldn’t see the sun it was so dark.”
March’s 70-year-old mother was initially lost in the confusion but reappeared “covered in ash, head to toe.”
Yellowstone National Park released a statement about the event.
“At around 10:00 AM MST on July 23, 2024, a small hydrothermal explosion occurred in Yellowstone National Park in the Biscuit Basin thermal area, about 2.1 miles northwest of Old Faithful,” the statement read. “Numerous videos of the event were recorded by visitors. The boardwalk was damaged, but there were no reports of injury. The explosion appears to have originated near Black Diamond Pool.”
The statement claimed that such geothermal explosions are “relatively common.”
“For example, Porkchop Geyser, in Norris Geyser Basin, experienced an explosion in 1989, and a small event in Norris Geyser Basin was recorded by monitoring equipment on April 15, 2024,” explained Yellowstone in their statement. “An explosion similar to that of today also occurred in Biscuit Basin on May 17, 2009.”
Geologists are investigating the incident. Authorities also reassured the public that there is no danger from future explosions, explaining that the explosion did not indicate volcanic activity and wasn’t caused by magma rising towards the surface.
“Today’s explosion does not reflect activity within volcanic system, which remains at normal background levels of activity,” the statement concluded.
Geologists are investigating the incident and the area is temporarily closed to visitors.
Normally changes in the geothermal “plumbing system” change due to major events like earthquakes, but Mike Poland, a research geophysicist with the Cascades Volcano Observatory and the current Scientist-in-Charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, told the NYT that this was not the case in the recent incident.
“What we had was a very localized change in this plumbing system,” Poland said. “Pressure can build and you can get an explosion like this.”
Despite their reassurances, the USGS acknowledges the very real danger of massive geothermal events.
“Although large hydrothermal explosions are rare events on a human time scale, the potential for additional future events of the sort in Yellowstone National Park is not insignificant,” the USGS website states. “Based on the occurrence of large hydrothermal explosion events over the past 16,000 years, an explosion large enough to create a 100-m- (328-ft-) wide crater might be expected every few hundred years.
Seismic activity at Yellowstone is a major concern. The Yellowstone Caldera is listed as the most dangerous supervolcano in existence and is the most monitored volcano in the world. It has erupted thrice over the last 2 million years, most recently about 70,000 years ago. Yellowstone has produced three cataclysmic eruptions that scientists know of: at 2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago.
Experts claim that in the event of a Yellowstone eruption, an estimated 87,000 people would be killed immediately and two-thirds of the United States would become uninhabitable. Moreover, a month-long super-eruption could affect the global climate for several years. The large spew of ash into the atmosphere would block out sunlight, resulting in an artificially long and intense winter worldwide, inhibiting agriculture and leading to global starvation.
A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit near Yellowstone in 1959, killing 28 people. However, the last major eruption at Yellowstone was 630,000 years ago, which may lead some to think that the supervolcano is overdue. Researchers do not understand the delay in that manner.
This type of cataclysmic seismic activity is mentioned specifically by the prophets as an aspect of the End-of-Days process.
The prophet describes this catastrophic period as a process to purify the inhabitants of earth for the Messianic period to follow.
And I will bring the third part through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on My name and I will answer them; I will say: ‘It is My people’ and they shall say: ‘Hashem is my God.’” Zechariah 13:9
Rabbi Yekutiel Fish, author of the Hebrew Torah blog, Sod HaChashmal, emphasized that forces of nature, such as earthquakes and volcanoes, are manifestations of God’s judgement, denoted in the Bible by His name ‘elohim.’ The rabbi noted that the seismic aspect of God’s influence in the world was explicitly described in Psalms.
Therefore we are not afraid though the earth reels, though mountains topple into the sea. Its waters rage and foam; in its swell mountains quake. Selah. Psalms 46:3-4
“The entire world will be judged before the Moshiach (Messiah),” Rabbi Fish told Israel365 News. “Nature will change, be less normal, because God will be guiding it in a more direct manner.”
“This will be especially true during the War of Gog and Magog,” he said. “The war will be unique in that it won’t be simply a war between countries. God will play a major role via nature, through natural disasters.”
“The verse in Psalms is clearly referring to tsunamis which will increase in the days preceding Messiah,” Rabbi Fish said. But we also see that earthquakes will increase around the world.”
Rabbi Fish cited an explanation on the verse from Rabbi David Altschuler, an 18th century Galician rabbi whose Bible commentary is known as the Metsudat David.
“The Metsudat David explains that in the war of Gog and Magog, half of the people who die will be killed in the war that will be fought between the nations,” he noted.
“The other half of the casualties will be caused by the natural disasters that are described as occurring in the end-of-days. Prominent among these disasters will be unprecedented earthquakes and volcanoes.”
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