Yellowstone Eruption: What Happened at the Park? Video Explained

A video has surfaced online depicting a violent eruption that took place at Yellowstone National Park’s Biscuit Basin on Tuesday, July 23. This has left many people concerned to know what happened at the park and if anyone died or was injured because of the incident.

Here is everything you need to know about the Yellowstone Park eruption.

Yellowstone Park eruption video explained

Facebook user Vlada March shared the video of the Yellowstone Park eruption. In the caption, he explained that the Biscuit Basin exploded right in front of them. The boardwalk was destroyed, and her mother got “some of the debris, but everyone is safe.” Since it was posted, the update has drawn over 2.5 million views and 5.3 thousand comments.

In the video, the tourists can be seen moving away from the explosion site. March can be heard telling her two sons to run. In an interview with the New York Times, March explained that she and her family were on a guided tour of the park at the time.

“‘Oh look,’ he [the guide] said. ‘This is unusual.’ I took out my phone like everyone does. Suddenly, it became a huge, dark cloud full of rocks,” March recalled. “It was a huge cloud. It covered the sun. For a few moments, you couldn’t see the sun. It was so dark.”

The park officials revealed that a hydrothermal explosion caused the incident. The US Geological Survey reported that the explosion happened near the Black Diamond Pool of the Biscuit Basin thermal area around 10 a.m. local time.

According to Marianne Karplus, professor of geological sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso, water in hydrothermal systems such as the one that exists at Yellowstone can regularly get to the boiling point. As a result, regular water can “flash into steam,” leading to an explosion. (via NPR)

While the video seems to show a violent explosion, the park authorities and USGS categorized it as one of the smaller ones. The park also reported that no one was injured or killed in the incident. However, as March mentioned in the post, the boardwalk was indeed damaged.