Steamboat Geyser, Yellowstone National Park Poster

"Steamboat Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming" by Catherine Sherman. A jet of water erupts from Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, teasing onlookers on August 28, 2013 (although no eruption would happen until September 3, 2014.) Steamboat Geyser, in Yellowstone National Park's Norris Geyser Basin, is the world's tallest active geyser. Steamboat Geyser has two vents, northern and southern, approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) apart. The north vent is responsible for the tallest water columns; the south vent's water columns are shorter. Prior to 1904, Waimangu Geyser, in New Zealand, had some taller eruptions capable of reaching 1,600 feet (490 m), but in 1904, a landslide changed the local water table, and since then, Waimangu has not erupted Steamboat's major eruptions generally last from 3 to 40 minutes (several durations surpassing an hour were observed during the 2018 active phase), and are followed by powerful jets of steam. During these eruptions, water may be thrown more than 300 feet (91 m) into the air. Steamboat does not erupt on a predictable schedule, with recorded intervals between major eruptions ranging from three days to fifty years. The geyser was dormant from 1911 to 1961. In 1964, twenty-nine eruptions were reported, setting a record for the most eruptions within a calendar year. In 2018, the geyser began a prolonged period of frequent activity lasting through at least 2022, with more than 40 eruptions recorded annually in both 2019 and 2020. On this day, the most previous eruption of Steamboat Geyser was July 31, 2013, which was six years and 162 days since the eruption before that.