Scientists see deeper Yellowstone magma

A possibly-related, even more brain melting (to me) event is the Columbia River flood basalts[1].

The erupted material is ~5x greater than the current hot rock in the Yellowstone chamber, so ~50x more than the current amount of melt. What amazes me, in addition to the enormous volume of the eruptions, is that some of the flows traveled hundreds of kilometers, in sheet-like flows, above 1000°C. Unlike the current Yellowstone magmatic system which generally has explosive eruptions, these basaltic flows were much hotter and more fluid--imagine an enormous river of lava flowing at ~10 mph.

To do some super back of the envelope calculations, the wikipedia source mentions an average volume of 500 km^3, and that some of the flows were erupted in a week (it has to be a relatively quick, high-volume thing to flow that far without cooling below 1000°C). This is about 4 times the average flow of the Amazon[2]. Of molten f-ing rock pouring out of a crack in the earth.

"Well honey, I guess we're not driving to that Seahawks game."

The CRBs are mostly Miocene, ~15 million years ago, but similar volcanism has covered southern Idaho, and it's younger. The youngest flows are at (IIRC) Craters of the Moon and Hell's Half Acre parks, and are ~2000 years old, but they're basically burps well after the main event. Basically any geologic event that happened 2000 years ago could happen again tomorrow; I really really hope that we get a chance to observe some (minor) flood basalt volcanism.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River_Basalt_Group [2]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=500+km^3+per+week+to+c...