An underground supervolcano in Wyoming could coat a large portion of North America with a thick coat of ash, and virtually block out the sun, if it erupts. But a research team from ASU says while it could happen with relatively little warning, it's not likely to happen any time soon.
The last major eruption of the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park was about 70-thousand years ago, and there's no telling when the next one could happen. Geologists' belief was that it would take centuries of buildup of magma before an eruption that large could happen again. But a research team headed by geology professor Christy Till has found that while signs like earthquakes and the movement of magma under the earth are good predictors of an eruption, we could have a lot less warning.
Till says her research team has determined that those types of signals would probably provide least several months' warning, if not a few years. However, that's a lot shorter than the several centuries that researchers previously believed it took for such pressure to build before a major eruption.