Yellowstone

When you picture Yellowstone
National Park, you probably
don’t envision lines of cars
and crowds of people. But this past
summer, after a year of quarantine
and remote work, millions of visitors
waited in lines for hours to find a parking
space and to survey the dramatic
landscape that makes this park’s natural
beauty so alluring.

Yellowstone was the United States’
first national park, founded in 1872. It
stretches into three states (Wyoming,
Montana, and Idaho), and sprawls
across 3,468.4 mi.² (8,983 km²).
That’s an area larger than Rhode Island
and Delaware combined. Within the
park’s expansive borders, the spread of
breathtaking wilderness flaunts some
impressive features.

Yellowstone hosts birds, such as
sandhill cranes and eagles, as well as
67 known mammal species, including
wolves, elk, bears, porcupines, and the
largest herd of bison on public land.
And that’s not the only record Yellowstone
can claim.

The park’s largest body of water has
an area of 136 mi.² (352 km²) and
a depth of 400 feet (120 m). Known
as Yellowstone Lake, it is the largest
high-elevation lake in North America.

Across the park, roughly 290 waterfalls
cascade from towering precipices
of the Rocky Mountains. The landscape
also boasts two colorful canyons,
the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone,
both carved by the Yellowstone
River in its journey north.

Still, with all those magnificent
sights, visitors wait in line the longest
to see fountains of hot steam and
water. With around 465 active geysers
each year, Yellowstone holds well
over half of the world’s geysers and
hot volcanic water features, such as
the vibrantly colored Grand Prismatic
Spring. The Grand Geyser (the world’s
tallest predictable geyser) and the
Giant Geyser (one of the world’s largest
geysers) erupt along with the most
famous gusher, Old Faithful, which
consistently spews a high fountain of
hot water and steam approximately
every 90 minutes.

Yellowstone is, by all accounts, a
magnificent place. But perhaps the
most breathtaking—and fearful—attribute lies beneath the park itself.
Much of Yellowstone is positioned on
the enormous craters of several volcanoes—one of them the largest in North
America. Every so often, news headlines
predict an eruption, warning that
the ginormous mass of ash and lava
would spell certain disaster for North
America. The documentary Yellowstone
Supervolcano: American Doomsday claims, “Yellowstone is a disaster
waiting to happen with the power to
change the face of the earth. . . . It will
be a global catastrophe . . . and bring
the world to a standstill.”

What are we to make of such dire
warnings of catastrophe?

Yellowstone’s geysers and craters
provide a fascinating link back to the
global flood cataclysm described in
Genesis 6–9. They also tell us what the
earth was like in the early post-flood
period. By looking at this geology from
a biblical view of earth history, we can
learn much about the past and even
future of the Yellowstone area—including
whether we should be concerned
about the next big volcanic eruption.

Past Yellowstone Eruptions

Why are there so many geysers in the
Yellowstone area? It’s because much of
the area, centered on Yellowstone Lake,
is the cauldron-like crater (referred to
as a caldera) of a humungous volcano.
Known as the Yellowstone Caldera, the
crater measures a staggering 43 by 28
miles (70 by 45 km). As the largest volcano
on the North American continent
with a history of huge explosive eruptions,
no wonder the Yellowstone Caldera
is called a supervolcano.

Fortunately, it is dormant—or seems
to be. But it did erupt several times
in the past, with devastating consequences.
Some of the thick ash deposits
have been found as far away as Texas.
Had anyone been living in North America
back then, they would have faced
dire consequences.

The destruction and loss of life from
the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount
St. Helens in Washington State is still
a vivid memory for many who witnessed
that awe-inspiring event as
the earth unleashed such raw power.
Yet in that eruption, Mount St. Helens
only blasted out about 0.24 mi.³
(1 km³) of ash which spread over a limited
local area downwind.

By comparison, at Yellowstone, about
240 mi.³ (1000 km³) of ash were
explosively ejected to form the surrounding
Lava Creek Tuff (a tuff is ash
that has been welded by the heat into
solid rock).1 However, there is evidence
of an even larger volcanic collapse structure
at Yellowstone. That larger and
older caldera, now largely obscured by
later geologic processes, was at least 60
miles (100 km) wide. Its explosion product,
called the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff,
formed from the eruption of an astounding
600 mi³ (2,500 km³) of ash.

The volcano appears to still be
active, as evidenced by the frequent
small earthquakes (that often make
headlines) due to movements of molten
rock far beneath the caldera. Therefore,
scientists have expressed what seem
to be well-founded fears of another
Yellowstone super-eruption. The US
Geological Survey continues to monitor
the ongoing volcanic activity at
Yellowstone. Yet, while no imminent
eruption warning has been issued, the
media regularly offer doomsday predictions
in sensational headlines.

However, we need to remember that
such predictions are based on a uniformitarian
(evolutionary millions of
years) interpretation of the earth’s history
that denies a global Genesis flood
cataclysm. What, then, are we to make
of such dire warnings from a biblical
view of earth history when we factor in
the flood cataclysm?

Before we can answer that question,
we need to understand what caused
the Yellowstone super-eruptions.

The Cause of Yellowstone Eruptions

At considerable depth underneath
every active volcano is a magma chamber,
a large bulbous mass of molten
rock. Under the Yellowstone Caldera,
the magma chamber extends down
from 3.7 miles (6 km) to almost 10
miles (~16 km). The tremendous heat
emanating from the chamber circulates
through the fractures, boiling the
water in the rock above. This process
powers the generation of the steam
that jets skyward in the geysers.

However, sophisticated geophysical
imaging has demonstrated that
beneath this immense Yellowstone
magma chamber is an inclined, broad
column of scorching rock. This mantle
plume (or hotspot) extends downward
at least 410 miles (660 km) through
the earth’s crust (the outer “skin”) and
through the upper mantle.2

This is not the only known mantle
plume. Another such hotspot exists
under the southeastern tip of Hawaii’s
big island. The copious volcanic eruptions
that the hotspot has fueled have
built the Hawaiian island chain as
the Pacific plate moved northwestward
over the top of the plume.3 These
plumes are part of the earth-shaping
operation of plate tectonics.4

The earth’s crust has been broken
into plates that have moved relative to
one another. So, for example, the eastern
edge of the Nazca plate (under the
eastern Pacific Ocean) is being dragged
down under the western edge of the
South American plate. The descending
plate sinks into the mantle and
causes hot mantle rock to move down
and across in the mantle. When that
hot mantle rock “hits” the very dense
core at the bottom of the mantle, it is
deflected back upward, sometimes as
plumes. So on the other (western) side
of the Nazca plate, molten rock is rising
along the East Pacific Rise and producing
a new seafloor that is forcing apart
the plates on either side of it.

Just like the “track” of the Hawaiian
plume can be traced back to the
northwest on the Pacific plate due to
the past eruptions that produced each
of the Hawaiian Islands, the Yellowstone
plume can be tracked back to the
southwest on the North American plate
because of the past eruptions it generated.5 In fact, even bigger eruptions
than those at Yellowstone occurred
back along that track of the plume—the
McMullen Creek eruption of more than
408 mi.³ (1700 km³) and the
Grey’s Landing eruption of more than
672 mi.³ (2800 km³).6

Of course, in the evolutionary millions-of-years interpretation, these plate
and plume motions have occurred at
today’s slow-and-gradual pace of inches
per year—the rate one’s fingernails
grow. Thus, evolutionists estimate, the
Yellowstone super-eruptions occurred
640,000 years ago (Lava Creek) and 2.1
million years ago (Huckleberry Ridge).
And those earlier super-eruptions back
along the hotspot track supposedly
occurred over 8 million years ago.

So how does all this fit within the biblical
framework for the earth’s history?

When Did Yellowstone Actually Erupt?

Plate tectonics occurred catastrophically
during the Genesis flood.7 The pre-flood
supercontinent and ocean floor
were both ruptured by “the fountains
of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11). The
resultant plates “sprinted” across the
globe at meters per second (a fast walking
pace) while devastating storm- and
tsunami-driven surges of ocean waters
flooded all land and dumped thousands
of feet of fossil-bearing sediment layers
across the former landmass, now broken
into many continents.

The pre-flood ocean floor plates
were also forced down into the mantle
under the edges of continental plates.
That caused massive movements of
hot rock circulating in the mantle, producing
the plumes where the hot rock
upwelled. All this upheaval was occurring
at the same, almost inconceivable
catastrophic rate of meters per second.

However, when all the pre-flood
ocean floor had sunk into the mantle,
the processes and plate movements rapidly
slowed down. By the time the flood
ended, the plate and plume movements
had decreased dramatically, though this
deceleration continued into the immediate
post-flood period until it eventually
settled down to today’s snail’s pace.

We know this dramatic deceleration
occurred because of the sizes of the
Hawaiian Islands along the plume’s
track. As it slowed down, the Pacific
plate lingered over the hotspot, and
thus more eruptions produced bigger
islands. That’s why the biggest island
stands where the plume is today.

In contrast, the super-eruptions along
the track of the Yellowstone plume on
the North American plate became progressively
smaller until the most recent
eruptions occurred at Yellowstone
itself. And we know these were all post-flood
super-eruptions because their ash
was deposited on the present post-flood
land surface before people migrated
from Babel and then arrived in North
America, maybe about 3,500 years ago.

Future Eruption: the Answer

So will there be another catastrophic,
world-changing Yellowstone
super-eruption? Probably not.

Because the plates and plumes decelerated
after the flood, post-flood volcanic
eruptions have also progressively
decreased in frequency and size.8 The
magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone
Caldera today is still there fueling
geysers, but it is essentially dormant and
quietening down, in spite of the occasional
tremor from moving rock, crystallizing
magma, or moving fluids. The
trivial movements of plates and plumes
are merely a leftover from the global flood
cataclysm that occurred only about
4,300 years ago. Even Hawaii’s eruptions
are now much smaller.

Our confidence in the answer is based
not on geology but on Scripture. Immediately
after the flood, in spite of ongoing
declining volcanic eruptions and other
geologic activity, God promised Noah
and all his descendants, including us,
that “while the earth remains, seedtime
and harvest, cold and heat, summer and
winter, day and night, shall not cease”
(Genesis 8:22). God has promised to
maintain and conserve the regularity of
the earth’s operation and seasons without
another global catastrophe, such as a
flood cataclysm that would destroy the
earth and man (Psalm 104:6-9), until the
final judgment by fire (2 Peter 3:7). He
never lies and can be trusted to keep his
promises.

The geology of Yellowstone represents
the devastation in the aftermath
of the recent global flood, warning
us of the final judgment to come.
But even while living in a sin-cursed
world entirely reshaped and marred by
the flood, we still enjoy the grandeur
and beauty of places like Yellowstone
and look forward to the unblemished
splendor of heaven that awaits all who
put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Dr. Andrew A. Snelling holds a PhD in geology from the
University of Sydney and has worked as a consultant research
geologist in both Australia and the USA. Author of numerous
scientific articles, Dr. Snelling is now director of research at
Answers in Genesis–US.