The thing about super-volcanoes like Yellowstone is that we’ve never had one erupt in all of recorded history, so we don’t really know what they are like and how they erupt.
Ever since we figured out that most of Yellowstone National Park is actually one freaking big volcano, there have been fears about what would happen if it erupts. In the past, it’s erupted every 600,000 years or so. The last eruption was about 640,000 years ago, so some folks think we are overdue for an eruption. Every few years, someone goes into a panic about earthquakes in the area, and another round of WE ARE ALL DOOMED!!! goes flying through the media. That sort of thing sells newspapers (well, back when there were still print newspapers) and generates clicks, so of course the media is going to run with the worst case scenario. The thing is, that 600,000 year cycle isn’t exactly like clockwork. If it goes all the way to 700,000 years this time, that’s no biggie, geologically speaking. “Yeah, it might go soon, but it’s more likely that it will wait a few tens of thousands of years” doesn’t exactly generate the same number of clicks on a news web site.
So ignore the hype. It’s kinda like Amelia Earhart, who is also in the news again. My first reaction was “Oh, they found her again, did they? Where was she this time?” It’s all just media hype. Same with the Yellowstone doom news stories. I just roll my eyes and say “Oh, it’s erupting and we’re all doomed again, is it?”
As far as scientists are concerned, there’s no immediate fear of eruption, and many scientists aren’t sure that there is a big eruption in our near future, geologically speaking. Just because it erupted three times, each about 600,000-ish years apart, is no guarantee there will be a fourth.
It’s probably fairly likely that there will be some eruptions there at some point in the next 50,000 years or so. Yellowstone has had smaller eruptions before, and with all of that hot magma sitting under it, it’s almost a certainty that it will have smaller eruptions again.
The worst-case scenario is pretty bad, though. The last super-eruption there threw out enough stuff to bury the entire state of Texas five feet deep. Imagine that much stuff being thrown into the atmosphere. There’s no good scenario if that happens. We’re talking years of volcanic winter and huge areas covered in ash and debris, the likes of which we have never seen at all in recorded history.
It’s almost guaranteed not to happen in our lifetimes, though.
The magma under Yellowstone naturally rises and falls, and the land rises and falls with it. Earthquakes are common, and media hype saying that we’re all doomed is almost cyclic at this point. Personally, I’m not going to worry about it.
