Yellowstone 'super eruption' would cover the country in ash and shut down air travel - but would NOT make the US uninhabitable

  • An eruption of the millions of tons of molten rock under Yellowstone would dump three feet of ash on Montana, inches on the Midwest and fractions of inches on the coasts 
  • Ash would shut down air travel and communications but would not make the country uninhabitable
  • Eruption would likely herald a year-long winter   

A volcanic eruption caused by the millions of tons of lava resting below Yellowstone National Park would cover cities across the country with ash and shut down air travel and communications, a study has concluded. 

But it would not herald the end of the United States as we know it, as previous reports have claimed.

The National Park in Wyoming and Montana sits atop a huge reserve of molten rock that has lain dormant for more than 70,000 years. 

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Catastrophic: A new USGS graphic shows how a 'super eruption' of the molten lava under Yellowstone National Park would spread ash across the United States

Catastrophic: A new USGS graphic shows how a 'super eruption' of the molten lava under Yellowstone National Park would spread ash across the United States

And experts had previously predicted that any new eruption would be one thousand times as powerful as the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption. 

They said that cities as far as 1,000 miles away from the park would be covered in a layer of ash up to 10ft deep, killing off all wildlife and making up to two thirds of the country uninhabitable. 

However a new study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) concluded that such an apocalyptic scenario would not come to pass.

The scientists used the program called Ash 3D to model the effects of a Yellowstone 'super eruption' and found that cities up to 300 miles from the park would be covered by up to three feet of ash, cities further afield in the Midwest would be covered by a few inches and coastal cities such as New York and California would get only a  fraction of an inch.

An eruption at Yellowstone would create an 'umbrella cloud' of ash which would expand evenly in all directions driven by the force of the seismic event. 

Dormant: The last volcanic eruption at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago 

Dormant: The last volcanic eruption at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago 

“In essence, the eruption makes its own winds that can overcome the prevailing westerlies, which normally dominate weather patterns in the United States,” Larry Mastin, the lead author of the new paper, said in a press release.  

Even these smaller levels of ash would be a disaster for the US. 

The USGS study says that electronic communication and air travel throughout the country would be shut down by an eruption. 

A huge cloud of ash thousands of miles across would also likely cause a year-long winter, say the study authors.  

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Pacific produced an ash cloud tens of miles across caused 'a year without a summer' across the globe with snowfall in the North Eastern United States in June.

Areas covered in feet of ash would see buildings at risk of collapse and sewer and water lines blocked, and winds would form large dunes of ash that would cover roads and buildings. 

Farming in the Midwest would be devastated by the cloud of ash, and highways across the country would become slippy and treacherous. 

The Yellowstone volcano has had three super eruptions - which produce more than 240 cubic miles of ash' in the past. One was 2.1 million years ago, another 1.3 million years ago and a third 640,000 years ago. 

Ash from these eruptions has been found across the US on the east and west coasts. 

The last volcanic activity at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago which produced a lava flow in the south of the park.  

 

 

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