When will Yellowstone’s volcano erupt? Scientists have an answer

Things are getting hotter than a Dutton family feud.

Yellowstone National Park, known for erupting geysers like Old Faithful, is home to one of earth’s largest volcanic systems, with the capacity to wreak havoc on an entire continent — and components of that so-called supervolcano are on the move, experts say.

A new study published in Nature suggested that Yellowstone’s magma and other superheated components have “shifted” northeast of the park’s sprawling caldera — a gigantic volcanic crater naturally created hundreds of thousands of years ago.

However, Americans need not panic about waking up under a blanket of molten ash anytime soon, lead author Nifna Bennington, geophysicist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, told the Washington Post.

“Nowhere in Yellowstone do we have regions that are capable of eruption,” the magma maven explained.

In other words, it will not be an issue during our lifetime.

“There will be eruptions, but it will probably be thousands of years before we can expect an eruption,” Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, an earth and planetary sciences professor at Denison University who was not involved in the study, added.

He believes the shift results from the gradual southwestward movement of the North American tectonic plate, extending well north of Canada and as far south as Mexico.

The last eruption to occur at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago, according to the United States Geological Survey.

It paled in comparison to the three “extremely large explosive eruptions” massive enough to fill the Grand Canyon with lava and ash within the past two million years.

Bennington added that this new discovery is unlikely to impact park visitors’ experiences in the great outdoors.

Geology experts also reported in June that Mount Saint Helens in Washington was entering a phase of “recharging” as its magma began to repressurize.

At the end of December, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, one of the world’s most active, began erupting again.