Earthquake rocks US city miles from supervolcano as fears of overdue eruption return

By CHRIS MELORE, ASSISTANT SCIENCE EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Published: 15:09 BST, 23 May 2025 | Updated: 15:31 BST, 23 May 2025

A small town in Idaho sitting near the Yellowstone supervolcano has been rocked by an early morning earthquake, possibly signaling a future eruption.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported that a 3.6 magnitude quake struck southeastern Idaho near the town of Soda Springs at 9:08am ET Friday morning.

The small rural town is just 126 miles from the Yellowstone’s caldera, the bowl-shaped volcanic depression within the famous national park.

According to early data from USGS, the quake was located at a shallow depth of just over 10 miles beneath the surface.

Shallow earthquakes are felt more strongly than deeper ones as they are closer to the surface, but they rarely cause any damage to property or buildings.

While geologists are still investigating the Friday morning quake, the Yellowstone supervolcano influences seismic activity in this region due to its massive magma chamber and connected fault lines.

It generates 1,500 to 2,000 small earthquakes each year, most of which are weaker than 2.0 on the Richter scale of magnitude.

These tremors usually shake areas within the Yellowstone Caldera and nearby fault zones, but the supervolcano can also influence seismic activity over 100 miles away.

Yellowstone is located beneath a national park spanning three states – Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Pictured, the Grand Prismatic Spring at the national park

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A new study recently showed that Yellowstone’s magma chamber is just 2.3 miles or about 12,500 feet below Earth’s surface.

Since it has not exploded in about 640,000 years, some experts and locals believe the volcano’s next eruption is overdue.

A dramatic uptick in seismic activity is often a sign that a volcano may soon erupt.  

Earthquakes around Yellowstone are driven by magma movement, hydrothermal activity, and regional tectonic stresses in the Intermountain Seismic Belt – an 800-mile active fault region stretching through Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana.

Scientists from USGS discovered a newly opened volcanic vent in Norris Geyser Basin in 2024.

The vent is at the foot of a rhyloite lava flow, and has been spewing hot steam up into the air.

Back in 2003, a similar vent was spotted just on the other side of the same rhyolite lava flow.

Yellowstone’s magma chamber spans an area 55 miles by 30 miles, extending from 2.3 miles below Earth’s surface to 10 miles down

The Yellowstone supervolcano is a vast reservoir of magma with the potential to unleash a category eight eruption over 100 times more powerful than Krakatoa 

So far, geologists have mapped more than 100 major hydrothermal areas in Yellowstone National Park, as well as more than 10,000 within its boundaries.

‘In terms of large explosions, Yellowstone has experienced three at 2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago,’ USGS explained.

‘This comes out to an average of about 725,000 years between eruptions,’ researchers continued.

‘That being the case, there is still about 100,000 years to go, but this is based on the average of just two time intervals between the eruptions, which is meaningless.’

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Earthquake rocks US city miles from supervolcano as fears of overdue eruption return

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