Why did Yellowstone’s Steamboat come back to life?

Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (1) – 1/7/21

Steamboat Geyser is one of hundreds of active geysers in Yellowstone National Park. In fact, it’s one of the park’s largest. After a period of dormancy, Steamboat roared to life in March of 2018 and has since erupted over 120 times. A research paper authored by Mara Reed of the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and co-authored by Michael Manga, a geoscientist and professor at the University of California, Berkley, studied this recent activity in an attempt to better understand what these periods of activity mean for the ecosystem as a whole. It seems as though water that has been isolated from the surface of the earth has been circulating for many decades, allowing the velocity and frequency of the geyser’s eruptions. One thing is for certain—it doesn’t seem like the geyser is likely to stop anytime soon.