How a Rock Rose 1,100 Feet in 6 Months; Idaho's Middle Butte

In Idaho, a large mass of rock more than 3,000 feet across once quickly rose from the ground until by 6 months later it was now 1,100 feet higher. This process occurred at the Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain, which stands apart from the other two towering rhyolite buttes with stand adjacent. In other words, the Middle Butte was quickly uplifted due to an unusual volcanic process referred to as a cryptodome, which is also what occurred at Mount Saint Helens in 1980 before it collapsed.

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Sources/Citations:
[1] U.S. Geological Survey
[2] Cascades Volcano Observatory

0:00 Snake River Plain
0:14 Three Buttes
1:24 Yellowstone Hotspot
2:14 Cryptodome Formation
3:12 Mount St Helens
3:41 Conclusion

[GeologyHub]

Cryptodomes are generally a worrying sign when detected at a volcano. Yet, as shown by Middle Butte in Idaho, they do not always result in a volcanic eruption.

[IstasPumaNevada]

I live in Montana and have driven down to the Craters area several times. I had wondered why the middle butte was such a markedly different color. Cool.

[unlvphysics]

I climbed Big Southern Butte in 1983 when training at S5W at NPTU Idaho. Thanks for the memories.

[AndisweatherCenter]

This is so cool! It would’ve been awesome to witness this. Your channel is the absolute best. No one else covers topics like these.

[Dragrath]

Its probably more complicated than just the passage of the Yellowstone hotspot thought that is involved because as I learned from Nick Zentner's livestream series the Seismic tomography reveals that there is a low density anomaly in a ridge like configuration passing through the snake river plane into southeastern Oregon and Northern California where it then directly connects to the Juan de Fuca ridge. In fact there is a similar line of more buoyant mantle heading south from Yellowstone beneath the Colorado Plateau and the Rio Grande rift valley then heading west into New Mexico Arizona and emerging beneath the Gulf of California as the East Pacific Rise. In the larger context this takes the form of clear rigid zig zags between thermally buoyant ridge like and transform like offsets in the deep solid mantle well below the asthenosphere down to at least the Mantle Transition Zone and is fully contiguous with the entirety of the Juan de Fuca ridge and East Pacific Rise, thus it looks to be a deep mantle discontinuity which separates the oceanic Pacific mantle plate from the North American Mantle plate.

In this context the fluid asthenosphere appears to have served as a weak layer allowing the upper portions of the North American plate to continue to be pushed to the south West despite the deeper underlying mantle portion being stuck.

In this picture Yellowstone is like Iceland a hotspot that formed along a mid ocean ridge this ridge was in the context of the lithosphere subducted but because the major mid ocean ridge system arises from the deep interior structure of Earth's mantle and not the crust the Craton and the mantle block it floats on has gotten stuck along a kink in the ridge and is instead in the process of being torn apart as the ridge blowtorches the continent from below likely driving mantle drip volcanism.

If you superimpose the crust and ridge line in the mantle you will see that the Basin and Range volcanism is predominantly associated with this ridgeline as it meanders beneath the continent. Yellowstone itself is at a triple Junction with two active boundaries and the ridge structure shape matches that of the Basin and Range province as a whole. When I first saw this via Nick Zentner's winter livestream series on the Crazy Eocene followed by the Baja BC series this year which just finished I was blown away.

In fact while it takes a bit of extrapolation if you try and reconstruct the spreading rates over time along with plate motion it seems like the East Pacific Rise and Mid Atlantic Ridge as well as the Gakkel Ridge of the arctic ocean(more accurately probably all mid ocean ridges) are locked into a conflict in terms of distributing the seafloor spreading rate and over the last 50+ million years the Mid Atlantic Ridge is losing ground to the Pacific in terms of spreading rate with both ridges having largely cannibalized the spreading rate of the Arctic.

This actually probably helps explain the otherwise puzzling New Madrid earthquake zone as the strain on the craton is likely getting transferred deeper into existing ancient sutures.

[davidpickett]

There's a stand alone mountain in east bay area of California between Sacramento and San Francisco near concord called Mount Diablo. Would like to know more about it.

[Meggligee]

I’ve driven past these buttes a few times out in Idaho and they’re amazing to see! Thanks for the cool video!

[wiredforstereo]

This is what I was told (among other things) about the Table Rocks in the Rogue Valley in Oregon. They are actually the remnants of a thick lava flow from about 7 mya.

Would possibly be a good subject for a video. They have the columnar cracks of a slowly cooling basalt lava flow and are prominent and well known in the area.

[GrandmasterBBC]

Fascinating stuff. More about Idaho geology please!

[richardstephens]

There is another much smaller dome directly north of the interstate just outside Twin Falls ID. This one was cut into to form a rock quarry however was abandoned when after a snow fall the entire excavated area was found to be warm having melted the over foot of snow that had fallen the night before.

[xitheris]

My Grandpa was a ranger at Craters for years. My parents would send me to spend a week with him each summer, so I got to experience many areas and caves not open to the public.

[TryxnTX]

This was very interesting to learn as of that I never knew that a magmatic intrusion can lift the ground this high. As a suggestion, there was a 5.4 earthquake in North texas. I was wondering what could've have caused this, so im sure that you discuss of this very well

[rhuephus]

years ago, I drove thru "Craters of the Moon" in Idaho, it was strange to see all that lava in what seems to be in the middle of nowhere.

[Quarterborefan]

I love the video's, and am especially interested in the Pacific Northwest. I would love to see you feature the lesser known Tower mountain caldera of NE Oregon

[GentlyUsedOreos]

Interesting question on research... Would drilling core samples through the butte help determine age better?

[grondhole]

Is there any way that you could do a discussion on all of the volcanoes along the 395 north of Ridgecrest, CA where that large quake happened? They seem out of place until you get up near Mammoth, CA. You can include the Fossil falls for extra material.

[yukismum]

Great vlog- is Mt Showa-shinzan in Hokkaido, at the base of the active Usu volcano being formed by the same process? it is red and steaming. If not could you do a vlog on Usu and SHowa-shizan please.

[mazer]

I love your videos, thank you! Any chance of making them longer with more information?? I value your work on getting up to date as well as historical information but would love deeper, longer dives into each subject…

[renzientarski]

I have a question- This intrusion of magma that forms the half dome and causes uplift-
would it be considered a laccolith?

[BlackHole]

That's an insanely high rate of uplift. Also, I wonder what one would find if they were to drill towards where the intrusion would be located.