The Huckleberry Ridge eruption
Yellowstone's largest known eruption throws out 2,450 cubic kilometres of rock.
- When
- Known to
- ± 20 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
The first of Yellowstone's three great caldera-forming eruptions occurs about 2.1 million years ago, forming the Island Park Caldera and depositing the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff across a vast area of the western United States — ash from it has been found as far as California and Iowa. At roughly 2,450 cubic kilometres it is around 2,500 times the volume of the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption, and one of the largest eruptions of the Quaternary anywhere on Earth.