While concerns about a potential eruption of the supervolcano beneath this iconic park may garner the most alarming headlines, a more likely hazard in the coming decades is a large earthquake. “The biggest concern we have for Yellowstone is not with the volcano, it’s with earthquakes,” said Michael Poland, scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a consortium of eight organizations led by the U.S. Geological Survey. “This is an underappreciated hazard in the Yellowstone area. There can and
there will be in the future magnitude-7 earthquakes.” On average, Yellowstone experiences 1,500 to 2,500 earthquakes a year, most of them so small they can’t be felt. But large quakes can – and have – occurred in the not-too-distant past. On Aug. 17, 1959, a magnitude-7.3 earthquake rocked the park, killing 28 people when a massive landslide pummeled into a campground. More than 80 million tons of rock fell, blocking a river and forming a lake, aptly named Earthquake Lake, that remains today. READ MORE
