According to a new U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report, in July 2021, Yellowstone National Park has experienced more than a thousand earthquakes.
The report stated that they haven’t seen this much seismic activity in a single month since June of 2017. Over 1,100 earthquakes rattled throughout the park but fortunately, these quakes were just minor ones.
Out of the thousand, only three of them were strong enough to be felt by humans. Park seismologists said that the quakes do not signal that the supervolcano beneath the park is about to explode anytime soon.
“While above average, this level of seismicity is not unprecedented, and it does not reflect magmatic activity,” according to the USGS report. “If magmatic activity were the cause of the quakes, we would expect to see other indicators, like changes in deformation style or thermal/gas emissions, but no such variations were detected.”
1,000+ earthquakes rocked Yellowstone National Park last month – WSIL TV https://t.co/670Tqo7Hrp pic.twitter.com/lBTFXOyvNI
— Catastrophe Modeling (@catrisky) August 3, 2021
The University of Utah Seismograph Stations have been responsible for monitoring and analyzing earthquakes in the Yellowstone region throughout July 2021. They said there were about seven swarms of seismic activity but the most energetic event occurred on July 16 and it was a magnitude-3.6 earthquake.
Yellowstone National Park is one of the most seismic-active regions in the United States with an average of 700 to 3,000 earthquakes per year. The biggest quake on record in Yellowstone was the Hebgen Lake quake in 1959 and it was a magnitude-7.3.