Is there a giant volcano in the United States?

He’s talking about Yellowstone . it’s in Montana I think.

Yes. It’s the Yellowstone Caldera located in Wyoming. Here is a short video of it. There are plenty of documentaries regarding it on YouTube as well.

“Wipe out the entire country?” I don’t think so.

Yes, Yellowstone and Mammoth Lakes, Cal., huge volcanic cauldrons that. if they blew, would devastate the country due to the direction of prevailing winds..

@jca While your thoughts are most likely correct, a super-eruption would have debilitating consequences for the US.

Take a look at this site from the USGS. In one map, it shows how far the ash might spread. Granted, there are many factors involved that determine how far the volcanic ash may spread, but it is possible. Volcanic ash can be lethal to plants and animals.

There are multiple volcanoes that are dangerous and people don’t often realize the actual number we have here. It’s unlikely we’ll see a super volcano in our lifetimes but one of these others could be bad if you are local to them.

When it blows big, it could cover a large part of the USA in ash and also cause the temperature of the the whole Earth to drop 12 to 15 degrees from the ash in the air.

I live in the foothills of Mt. Lassen , which had a volcanic explosion almost 100 years ago. If it does it again, I can assure you my whole world will be destroyed.

@Tropical_Willie
2 reasons to look forward to it. It could single handedly reverse global warming!

Your son is referring to yellow stone but Washington State is rife with volcanoes. St Helens is only one in the Cascade chain of volcanoes.

I knew we have a lot of volcanoes, and that many could go off, but I had no idea we had anything like that!

Wasn’t there a scare about Yellowstone a few years ago? I seem to remember reading articles about how the pressure was building and some people were saying it could blow?

And yes, ash. Whenever there is a major eruption in Iceland it rains on us a few days later. I remember one year, it was all red. Red dust everywhere.

There are 6 known “super volcano’s” in the world with three being in the US: Yellowstone, Mammoth(Long Valley Caldera), Valles Caldera(New Mexico), Lake Toba(North Sumatra),Taupo Caldera(New Zealand) and Aira Caldera (Japan).

If Yellowstone national park ever erupted, it’d create a dust cloud in the air that’d block out the sun over a large portion of the planet.

That is very scary stuff! I think if any one of those six went off, that would affect the whole world.
I do recall eruptions in Iceland, and air traffic being affected.
@Pied_Pfeffer – you have supplied a very informative article. I was absorbed by it, and afraid. It looks like the events are timing in closer together. Exponentially, it could happen again at any time.

When Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980, it affected us in Kansas. We had the most spectacular sun rises and sunsets for a few days. It also killed off all of our dinosaurs.

We saw effects too, in Illinois. I think we still have all our dinosaurs though. Ha ha!

That recent thing in Iceland, which hasn’t actually happened, would have shut Europe down for decades. Decades. Not just flight problems but sunlight blockage so that crops would fail and animals would die.
When St Helen’s blew in 1989 (and that was tiny) rivers were diverted, floods washed over the local countryside, highways were blocked, ash got into machines and ruined them, crops were buried with ash and couldn’t grow, crops that would have been ready that early were made inedible by ash which is like tiny bits of glass, and ash was found as far away as New Hampshire.

Correction: St Helen’s blew in 1980. Typo.

Here is another way to look at it. The eruption at Mount Saint. Helens was more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Should the Yellowstone Caldera erupt again, it has the potential of being 2,000 times the size of Mt. Saint. Helens.

Will it happen in our lifetime? No one knows. Teams of geologists monitor Yellowstone, and the more they learn, the more warning we will have.

There are at least three of them: Yellowstone, Long Valley Caldera in California and the Valles Caldera in New Mexico, When they eventually erupt it will be a very bad day in the US and the world.

..You forgot the Cascades, @sebb.

I didn’t include the Cascades because they are a group of volcanoes, not a giant or super volcano.