Yellowstone earthquake: Fears for deadly SUPERVOLCANO ERUPTION after quake

Yellowstone has been hit by a 2.6 magnitude earthquake this evening, setting alarm bells ringing with the park’s fearsome supervolcano already “under strain” according to one expert. 

Below the surface of the park lies the fearsome Yellowstone Caldera, a supervolcano which last erupted approximately 630,000 years ago. 

Experts warn it erupts roughly every million years, with some geologists claiming it is already showing signs it could be ready to blow once again. 

Today’s earthquake roughly 20 miles from the supervolcano will add to concerns of an imminent – and devastating – eruption. 

Earlier this week seismologists from UNAVCO, a nonprofit university-governed consortium, said the site was “under strain”. 

They said “the strain signal is larger than would be expected if the crust under Yellowstone were completely solid”.

However these findings are “no cause for alarm”,  they said, and reflect the expected measurements of a volcano which has been building up for close to a million years.

If the Wyoming volcano were to erupt an estimated 87,000 people would be killed immediately and two-thirds of the USA would immediately be made uninhabitable due to a huge ash cloud sparking rapid climate change. 

The large spew of ash into the atmosphere would block out sunlight and directly affect life beneath it creating a “nuclear winter” for huge parts of Earth – not simply the American West. 

The massive eruption could be a staggering 6,000 times as powerful as the one from Washington’s Mount St Helens in 1980 which killed 57 people and deposited ash in 11 different states and five Canadian provinces.

If the volcano explodes, a climate shift would ensue as the volcano would spew massive amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere, which can form a sulphur aerosol that reflects and absorbs sunlight.