Geyser Gazing Society

Types of Geysers

Geysers can and have been categorized like clouds and mountains. Thus, when you are geyser gazing you might want to know the different types. There are two general types of geysers—one known as the fountain geyser and the other termed the cone geyser.

The fountain geyser spurts water erratically and often violently, shooting water in all directions like its namesake. Before the geyser erupts, a pool forms in a crater over the site of the geyser, and then the geyser shoots through it spraying the pool all over. Sometimes, the water in the pool completely drains away. The cone geyser shoots out of a mound of mineral deposits, which are known as siliceous sinter. Unsurprisingly, the material is also known as geyserite.

Cone geysers usually erupt in steady bursts and can last for a few seconds or for minutes at a time. Some geysers can erupt for hours at a time, although those are rare and some of them have been dormant for several years. The Great Fountain geyser in Yellowstone National Park regularly has eruptions of about forty-five minutes long. The famous geyser the Old Faithful is a cone geyser.

In addition to geysers being categorized according to eruption, they are also divided into six different reservoir types. Geysers in class A have one single pipe as their source and they end in a cone at the surface. Type B geysers have a narrow, deep shaft while type C geysers are like type A with the exception of a pool of water at the surface rather than a cone. The other three types are usually found in fountain geysers. Type D has a series of smaller reservoirs, which empty in turn causing the geyser to spurt irregularly. Type E and type F geysers are variations on a single shaft.

There are also geysers, which are misnamed, but are called that because they are eruptions of pressurized water. Artificial geysers can be created in places with geothermal activity and then fitted with coverings that make their eruptions look like geysers. The technical name for these artificial geysers is “erupting geothermal wells.”

Another type of false geyser is a cold-water geyser. Instead of boiling water, carbon dioxide causes eruption in cold-water geysers. They look very similar to true geysers, but the water in cold-water geysers is usually whiter and frothier—like water in rapids—due to the carbon dioxide. There are a couple of cold-water geysers in Germany and a famous one in Utah called the Crystal Geyser.

Hot springs that continually spout water are sometimes called geysers. They actually do not qualify as a geyser because a geyser has periods of dormancy. The basic categorization of geysers is not too complex, and some geyser gazers may find it interesting to try to classify the different geysers that they see into the categories of cone geysers and fountain geysers. Next time you are at a geyser field, you might want to study the geyser and take a guess before you look it up in your guidebook.