After being dormant for eight years, Yellowstone National Park’s Steamboat Geyser has erupted. The blast happened Wednesday (July 31), with water shooting as high as at 300 feet.
Visitors to the park were able to watch the eruption from a nearby boardwalk, standing in the path of the geyser’s spray. According to Dan Hottle, a spokesman for Yellowstone, the eruption only lasted for nine minutes, though steam continued to pour from the geyser as the night went on, NBC News reports. Hottle says once a geyser runs out of water, steam normally vents for nearly 24 hours.
The park’s most famous geyser, Old Faithful, erupts nearly every 91 minutes. However, that’s one of the rare predictable geysers. Most, like Steamboat, can’t be predicted because what causes the sudden eruptions is not known. It last erupted in 2005 and is known as the “world’s tallest geyser.”