Morning Glory Pool: Summer 2018 Summary
While catching up on my photo organization, I come across so many little stories that call to be added to my journals. This week, I pulled together photos of Morning Glory Pool. While adding the photos to my field journal, I could see how a summary for the season would be fun to share here.
MORNING GLORY POOL | SUMMER 2018
On my first visit to Morning Glory Pool this spring (13 May 2018), I noticed there was a section that didn’t have orange microbes. However, there wasn’t any blue I could really see down in the vent. I took a photo and said, “Huh. That’s odd.” Usually that means my curiosity just got triggered. I made a note and decided I’d make more of an effort to walk down to see what it looked like this summer and check for changes.
I remembered other times when there was a blue streak along that back wall of the vent. Once home, I went through photos to see when I’d seen that before and dug into the photos. As with all thermal features, you can usually find some small detail to see if you’re looking at one side or another. With Morning Glory, there’s a section that almost looks like a step. And that’s what I used to compare photos that were taken at different angles.
What I found was that the area above the “step” in previous years was also lighter in color whenever blue showed in the vent. To be honest, I need to go more thoroughly through the raw photos from past years to see if there are more I’m missing. I strongly suspect I am.
OLDER PHOTOS:
I continued to visit Morning Glory throughout the summer (with fewer visits in July and Aug). According to my visits, the pool heated up the most in early June before cooling back down enough for orange microbes to grow back in. (Note: thermal water “cool” enough to grow orange microbes is still hot enough to scald our skin in seconds.) The photo showing it at its hottest was 4 June 2018.
When it was apparent that it was cooling down, I made fewer visits. The last visit on 1 Oct 2018 showed a nice ring of orange at the top.
2018 Photos:
SO, WHAT’S THE POINT?
This is where ideas, wild speculation and guesses come into play…also known as the fun part. This is where theories are proposed. Watching this pool heat up this year made me wonder more about why that section heated the way it did – the blue area (lack of microbes) didn’t rise from deep in the vent as one might expect to see if the spring itself heated up.
Could there be another hot spring underground next to Morning Glory? And if so, how much of Morning Glory’s loss of lovely blue color was due to trash and how much perhaps due to the cooling of an underground neighboring pool (if one exists)? There’s no doubt that trash and other items filling vents can choke a hot spring or geyser to death.
Morning Glory Pool was famous for its lovely blue color and there have been many cleanings of it over the years as attempts to bring back the color that gave this pool its name. While some helped, the bright blue hasn’t returned.
I have to wonder if this wouldn’t be a very good place to also test out the Ground Penetrating Radar efforts the park has used in other areas to see what’s actually going on below ground. Just a thought from a citizen captivated by this science.
And another stray question popped into my head while writing this post – Could the cyclical heating of Morning Glory Pool tie in at all with the activity at Fan and Mortar? I have no idea what actual data would show, but it would be interesting to compile more photos of Morning Glory to see what that cycle might be (if there is one). My photos seem to show about every two-ish years. But I don’t think there are enough photos in my collection to really prove or disprove that. That would take a team effort.
Ah, curiosity triggered again.