image of geothermal spring in Yellowstone National Park

Photo courtesy of Frank Kovalchek

Warm up this winter with the sounds of Yellowstone’s hot springs, fumaroles and geysers. Each geothermal feature has its own, unique sound. Here are a few samples to stoke the fire. (You’ll find more recordings on the library’s new Acoustic Atlas.) 

Fumaroles are volcanic steam vents that bellow from the earth’s surface. This one was recorded in Yellowstone’s Porcelain Basin

Click here to listen to fumarole in Porcelain Basin on SoundCloud

 

Steamboat Geyser is said to be the largest geyser in the world, and one of the most unpredictable. It can produce plumes of steam as high as 300 feet—as it did last September—or it can simply chug along like it did on the day I visited. Full scale eruptions are extremely rare and have occurred only a few times over the past ten years.

 Click here to listen to Steamboat Geyser on SoundCloud

 

Emerald Spring in the Norris Geyser Basin bubbles continuously like a winter cauldron.

Click here to listen to Emerald Spring on SoundCloud

 

All recordings are by Jeff Rice for the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University: acousticatlas.org. Want to download the recordings from this blog? Go ahead. They are available for use through a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).