There’s a lot to love about Yellowstone National Park.

From its iconic geysers to the incredibly diverse animal and bird population, and the otherworldly landscape, Yellowstone is an iconic site for locals and tourists alike for good reason.

As the first National Park in the US, Yellowstone has drawn attention for its bubbling pools and steaming hot springs, with its many geysers reminding the unsuspecting visitor that they are, in fact, traversing a supervolcano – and underneath the surface, something very, very powerful is brewing.

Though Yellowstone last erupted over 70,000 years ago and isn’t expected to blow again any time soon (with the activity at Yellowstone caldera estimated at once every 600,000 to 800,000 years) that doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasional reminders that this is an active seismic site.

And thanks to scientists based at the national park, yet another one of Yellowstone’s dramatic changes has been noted.

As recently explained in Yellowstone Volcano Observatory’s weekly column, known as Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles, the nature of an active volcano means a lively and sometimes unpredictable terrain.

And for one scientist traversing the park last summer, this level of unpredictability reached new heights as a new column of steam billowed out of the marshes beside them.

Yellowstone’s resident geologists were quick to confirm this new area of activity in the park was as a result of hydrothermal activity, as the team explained in their column:

“This new feature is at the foot of a rhyolite lava flow about 3 meters above the marsh below, and it lies within a swath of warm, hydrothermally altered ground that is approximately 60 meters (about 200 feet) long.”

And with a temperature of 171 °F, it’s no wonder that so much steam was billowing from the fresh tear in the ground.

But this was not the first time that such an occurrence happened in this area of the park, close to Nymph Lake.

In fact, the team advise that such events have been happening for over twenty years, with a sizeable site of hydrothermal activity noted in a similar area in 2003.

And in a place like Yellowstone National Park – in which over 10,000 hydrothermal features are known and currently documented – it seems like this new hydrothermal feature is just one in a long line of surprises from the volcano lying deep below.

Which leaves scientists and visitors wondering, when will the next one pop up? And where?

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about 50 amazing finds on Google Earth.