Hawaii versus Yellowstone (Yellowstone monthly update - December 2025)

Just last week, Kīlauea put on another dramatic display of lava fountaining and flows within the caldera, during its 37th episode of this most recent eruption. It doesn't seem like Hawaii and Yellowstone have a lot in common, but actually, those two magmatic systems have a common cause.

They are both hotspots. A hotspot is an area of anomalous melting that's tens of miles deep. It's fed by a plume of hot material that originates deep within the earth.

The hotspot is relatively fixed, so as the tectonic plates that make up the earth's surface move across the hotspot, it creates a chain of volcanoes that gets older the farther away you get from the current center of volcanism. In Hawaii, there is a chain of seamounts that gets older as you move to the northwest. In Yellowstone, there's a chain of ancient calderas that gets older and older across the Snake River Plain.

The difference between these two places is the crust. In Hawaii, the crust is very thin, dense, oceanic crust, and the magma has no problem punching right through. There are spectacular fountains and flows of very fluid lava with a primary composition (basalt).

But in Yellowstone, the crust is very thick, continental material and the magma stalls on the way up. It chemically differentiates. It changes, to become a much stickier and more explosive type of magma (rhyolite).

So that's the main difference between Hawaii and Yellowstone. Both are hotspots, but because of the crustal setting – oceanic versus continental – you get red lava eruptions in Hawaii and big, huge explosive eruptions in Yellowstone.

During the month of November 2025, the University of Utah Seismograph Stations, which monitors and operates the Yellowstone seismic network, located 251 earthquakes. The largest was a Magnitude 3.2. There are no significant changes in deformation patterns (the overall trend is subsidence). Steamboat Geyser activity has diminished. Yellowstone volcano remains at normal, background levels of activity.

For questions, email yvowebteam@usgs.gov

Read Caldera Chronicles https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/caldera-chronicles

Visit Yellowstone Volcano Observatory website https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone