The Valentine’s Day Eruption

A full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano in North America occurred on February 14, 2025, at 2 a.m.

yellowstoneThe Yellowstone Caldera’s initial explosion pushed a dense bloom of pyroclastic flow a thousand kilometers in every direction. Tens of thousands died within minutes as Tephra blanketed California, coastal Canada, and northern Texas.

Four thousand cubic kilometers of lava poured from the volcano, forcing a cataclysmic blow-out of its subterranean hydrothermal hot spots. Hours into the eruption, the lithosphere anchoring the Rocky Mountains collapsed, causing bedrock throughout Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, and Oregon to buckle.

The Topaz Plate’s destruction brought 97 million cubic feet of subterranean water to the surface, stressing faults and causing a 9.8 scale seaquake that shook the Murray Fracture Zone. This quake produced a mega-tsunami that hit California’s coast, submerging the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys before colliding with the inundation covering the Rocky Mountains’ low-lying areas.

calderaeruption
Eruption Concept Art – Altered from original National Geographic Image

Yellowstone’s eruption lasted many months, coating most of the western United States in ash and killing the millions evacuated inland following the Eros Impact. After ash smothered vegetation and polluted groundwater, only the underground facilities of Population Relocation Center 3 in south-central Texas, and the Fort McMurray Refugee Center in northeast Alberta, survived into the Dark Years.


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