Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
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Handkerchief Pool (2025)
Geysers are hot springs that episodically erupt columns of water. They occur in few places on Earth. The highest concentration of geysers anywhere is at the Yellowstone Hotspot Volcano in northwestern Wyoming, USA.
Handkerchief Pool is an historically-famous hydrothermal feature in the Black Sand Basin of Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin. It is located in the southernmost runoff channel from Rainbow Pool. Eruptions from Handkerchief Pool also produce runoff, which heads southeast and drains into Iron Spring Creek. Some runoff also heads toward Cinnamon West Geyser. The pool is about 3.5 to 5 meters in diameter, with a subcentrally-located vent. The odd name is in reference to early tourists placing handkerchiefs into the pool - the pieces of cloth would get twirled around, sucked into a side vent, then discharged back to the surface, all “nice and clean”. Tourists and park personnel purposefully ruined and vandalized the feature and it stopped engaged in natural laundering behavior. The trail leading directly to Handkerchief Pool was eventually removed. The geyser that is currently named “Handkerchief Pool” may or may not be the original feature. Even if not, the current feature is within a few feet of the original. Eruption durations are rarely reported, but a Handkerchief Pool eruption in July 2016 was a little over five hours and a June 2025 eruption was less than 1.25 hours long. Eruptions consist of low to somewhat moderate-sized, frequent, closely overlapping, splashing bursts. Reported preplay behavior consists of small, intermittent, splashing with pauses before continuous splashing commences.
Black Sand Basin videos:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dL6UmmXTBVwmCwqDQXjddb1pn82Whbf
All clips - Handkerchief Pool erupting in the late afternoon of 5 August 2025.
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Handkerchief Pool (2025)
Geysers are hot springs that episodically erupt columns of water. They occur in few places on Earth. The highest concentration of geysers anywhere is at the Yellowstone Hotspot Volcano in northwestern Wyoming, USA.
Handkerchief Pool is an historically-famous hydrothermal feature in the Black Sand Basin of Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin. It is located in the southernmost runoff channel from Rainbow Pool. Eruptions from Handkerchief Pool also produce runoff, which heads southeast and drains into Iron Spring Creek. Some runoff also heads toward Cinnamon West Geyser. The pool is about 3.5 to 5 meters in diameter, with a subcentrally-located vent. The odd name is in reference to early tourists placing handkerchiefs into the pool - the pieces of cloth would get twirled around, sucked into a side vent, then discharged back to the surface, all “nice and clean”. Tourists and park personnel purposefully ruined and vandalized the feature and it stopped engaged in natural laundering behavior. The trail leading directly to Handkerchief Pool was eventually removed. The geyser that is currently named “Handkerchief Pool” may or may not be the original feature. Even if not, the current feature is within a few feet of the original. Eruption durations are rarely reported, but a Handkerchief Pool eruption in July 2016 was a little over five hours and a June 2025 eruption was less than 1.25 hours long. Eruptions consist of low to somewhat moderate-sized, frequent, closely overlapping, splashing bursts. Reported preplay behavior consists of small, intermittent, splashing with pauses before continuous splashing commences.
Black Sand Basin videos:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dL6UmmXTBVwmCwqDQXjddb1pn82Whbf
All clips - Handkerchief Pool erupting in the late afternoon of 5 August 2025.
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![Big Anemone Geyser (2024)
Big Anemone Geyser (2024)
Geysers are hot springs that episodically erupt columns of water. They occur in few places on Earth. The highest concentration of geysers anywhere is at the Yellowstone Hotspot Volcano in northwestern Wyoming, USA.
Big Anemone Geyser is a frequently erupting small geyser in the southern Geyser Hill Group of Yellowstones Geyser Hill Group. It is immediately adjacent to Little Anemone Geyser - together they make up “Anemone Geyser”. Big Anemone has a nearly circular basin with a central vent and lacks a well-defined border. Encircling the cream-colored to grayish, smooth geyserite-floored vent area is abundant, well-formed, closely spaced nodules of grayish geyserite (columnar geyserite & pseudocolumnar geyserite), similar in appearance to cave popcorn (coralloids). Some small biscuit-like masses of grayish geyserite are present on the northern side of the geyser, often with apical puckered structures. The geyserite biscuits are in and along a small, irregularly-shaped, eruption splash pool. The diameter of Big Anemone Geyser, as measured across its nodulose geyserite area, is about 2.5 meters. The diameter, as measured from the outer edge of the colorful, encircling microbial mats, is about 4.5 to 5 meters.
Big Anemone’s geyserite is especially well-formed and attractive. Geyserite is a friable to solid chemical sedimentary rock composed of opal (hydrous silica, a.k.a. opaline silica: SiO2•nH2O), It forms by precipitation of hydrous silica from hot spring water. Geyserite is the dominant material at & around Yellowstone hot springs and geysers (the Mammoth Hot Springs area is a major exception to this). The silica in the geyserite is ultimately derived from leaching of subsurface, late Cenozoic-aged rhyolitic rocks by superheated groundwater. Rhyolite is an abundant rock at Yellowstone.
Big Anemone Geyser has frequent, moderately low to medium-sized, splashing eruptions. Eruption durations are about half a minute long. Intervals between eruptions starts range from about 7 minutes to almost half-an-hour. Eruption cessations at Big Anemone Geyser consist of rapid pool drains. Most of the erupted water ends up back in its own vent. Some eruption splash water enters Little Anemone’s basin or its runoff channel.
Geyser Hill Group videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dL6UmmXTBUMW6oQAafxBFkkAvXyDrE3
Clip 1 - Big Anemone Geyser’s 4:32 PM eruption on 11 June 2024.
Clip 2 - Big Anemone Geyser’s 4:41 to 4:42 PM eruption on 11 June 2024. [time stamp 0:47]
Clip 3 - Big Anemone Geyser’s 4:52 PM eruption on 11 June 2024. [time stamp 1:32] Big Anemone Geyser (2024)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QtY6k2dMhhU/mqdefault.jpg)