Monday Musings: Yellowstone Update and Turrialba from space UPDATED with a Turrialba webcam!

Two quick notes:

A Costa Rican farmer evacuating in early January 2010 after renewed activity of Volcan Turrialba.

Well, it appears that after a quiet night on Friday, the current Yellowstone swarm picked up where it left off. We’re now up to 1,200 earthquakes since January 17th, with a pair over M3 today. Of course, people are still uppity about the swarm, especially after the earthquake in Haiti, but really, they’re about as connected as worrying about the rainy day in Boston when there was a typhoon in Malaysia. Just to get people on the same page, YVO still says: “The swarm events are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults and are called tectonic earthquakes and are not thought to be caused by underground movement of magma. Currently there is no indication of premonitory volcanic or hydrothermal activity, but ongoing observations and analyses will continue to evaluate these different sources. Enough said.

UPDATE 1/25/10 at 7PM: This just in, Turrialba has its own webcam. Not much to see right now but grey, but better keep an eye on it.

Lost in the Yellowstone arglebargle is the fact that some volcanoes are actually erupting. The NASA Earth Observatory posted a great image of the summit area at Turrialba in Costa Rica. The volcano has been showing signs of life after over 100 years of quiet. The activity has apparently prompted the evacuation of farmers near the volcano due to the amount of fumarolic degassing – mostly of carbon dioxide, water vapor and sulfur dioxide.