| Note: | Did not see a steam plume from elk park driving in - geyser fog must have been thicker than it looked. Plume looked a little larger than normal from PL, didn't figure out it was IE until I rolled down my window. Left the car at 0434. In front of platform at 0437, to Steamboat in strong steam phase. Decent flow down both NV and SV channel still. LOTS of debris on the steerage bridge, stretching longer than the railing and including several fist sized rocks! Everything SB was raining on was freezing over. BW's extremely slick. Winter wonderland of frozen trees around the upper deck and dead tree zone after sunrise. 0520 NV started sounding more sputtery and started gaining a lot more water content. SV steam started to die down. It got really wispy and started looking like it might eventually just drop out. 0530 wind shifted and SB resumed steamphase. Bummer - we were getting curious to see where that was going to go. C&B left and a little but after that the wind shifted and we started getting restarts. The restarts were not very tall (the highest ones probably topped out at around 50'-60') and the pauses were short. NV would pause, SV would go to roaring steam and die down almost all the way, then NV and SV would pick up at close to the same time. No SV double-clutching observed this time, and the water never turned dirty. Pauses noted at 0640, 42, 45, 48, & 50. Partial/near restarts noted at 0655, 56, 0703, 05, 10, & 13, where NV would start to die down, SV would go to roaring steam, and NV would start to pause, but not quite stop before taking off again. More full restarts at 0715, & 18. More partial restarts at 0723, & 24. 0805 full restart. 0806, 07, 11, 12 partial restarts. At 0812, & 14, there were a kind of cross between the partial and full restarts where NV would stop but only for a split second before restarting, not giving SV a chance to die down. Wind changed again after that and the restart action was over. Steamphase roar still quietly audible from the parking lot. Eventually it started to sound sputtery again. Possible restart events noted from the parking lot at 0859, 0903 and probably a few other times as well. |
