Geothermal heat map of US hot springs

Geothermal heat map of US hot springs soakingsprings.com

Every US hot spring plotted over a map of geothermal heat flow, with the springs on the hottest ground, the hottest water, and how each state compares.

116 points•armenarmen•7 days ago•40 comments•

#map #hot #geothermal #springs #heat #geothermal heat #heat map #hot springs

40 comments

jtwaleson6 days ago

A couple years back I drove from Vegas to Yosemite. Due to a road closure we had to take a 4 hour detour. We had this colourful van from Escape Campervans, and every night looked at freecampsites.net to find a free place to sleep. Nice adventures.

That night around 8pm we drove to a random pick, called Willy's Hot Springs, very tired and hungry. We had no idea what it was and had never been to a hot springs. After confirming we could stay there, we drove for dinner and a beer at Mammoth. When we got back, we were curious and went along the wooden path to see the hot springs.

It was around midnight, there was no moon and 0 light pollution. It was magical. You sit in the cold night in natural hot water, in the middle of pretty barren country. There's all the stars and the milky way. Then all of a sudden it got pretty bright. The moon rose over the horizon. It was the first and only moonrise I've ever seen.

This was the most magical night in nature I've ever experienced. A friend of mine said "oh, Willy's Hot Springs, I've been there too, it was kind of mid." I think we experience the world in different ways.

sampli6 days ago

Probably mid because he went there at 5 pm on a Saturday and there were 40 people in that tiny pool haha

stronglikedan5 days ago

> It was the first and only moonrise I've ever seen.

I went camping in the middle of nowhere to watch a meteor shower, and while the shower was very active, the moonrise was the "star" of the show. Incredible experience.

Denzel6 days ago

Similar experience at the Arizona Hot Springs, we sat in there nestled between a slot canyon as the sunset and the moon came out. Magical. One of the most memorable experiences of my life.

The hours-long hike back through the desert in the dark of night though, kinda scary. Felt like we were walking on Mars.

armenarmen6 days ago

I considered adding a dark skies layer for this very reason!

jbmny6 days ago

Ha - I live on the East Coast and had never been to a hot spring in my life until last week, on a road trip in California. It was Wild Willy's. Your night visit sounds wonderful, but our late afternoon stop was beautiful too. Blissful scenery all around.

solfox6 days ago

Just spent my birthday weekend down at Travertine Hot Springs in CA. Beautiful, well maintained, and free. https://www.soakingsprings.com/hot-springs/california/traver...

oasisbob6 days ago

Some of these locations near me are really poorly researched and described.

eg, Garland Mineral Springs is primarily located on private land, and was destroyed by flooding and river avulsion. The entry carries a name of a specific researcher, but the description is obviously LLM generated.

https://www.soakingsprings.com/hot-springs/washington/garlan... https://garlandmineralsprings.com/

desertrider126 days ago

There are some weird mistakes too, like for San Antonio hot spring in NM the coordinates are right but the county is wrong. Seems like that should be an easy thing to automate using GIS.

bitbckt6 days ago

Yeah, I spent a few minutes poking around the springs in Northern Nevada I’m familiar with, and completely agree with your assessment. This is slop.

seplox6 days ago

I think it's funny that the volcanic fumaroles are listed. On one hand, yes, they're certainly active geothermal sites. On the other hand, the page is tailored to hot springs.

Average temp: 250F above ambient. Status: Open for soaking. Note: Please don't soak.

cossatot6 days ago

Well, the ones on the summits of Hood and Rainier are just so readily accessible that it'd be a shame not to dip your toesies in.

comrade12346 days ago

I think it's missing some. There are a couple of hotsprings off the highway between Ventura and Ojai. They're 'wild' and completely natural - you can make your own pools using rocks and sand for dams. I saw Steven Spielberg once when I was there with a few people - he was reminiscing with another guy about the problems they had filming something...

Edit: I think it was empire of the sun. They were talking about how difficult it was to film explosions in Japan.

throwup2386 days ago

Maybe you’re thinking of Letters from Iwo Jima? They shot on location but the island is basically a mass war grave so they couldn’t use much pyrotechnics to avoid disturbing the ground.

Empire of the Sun was mostly shot in Shanghai and Spain. That was the one where they got fined for burning old tires for the special effect smoke, which dumped a bunch of toxic smoke on Shanghai.

comrade12346 days ago

Yeah I don't know what movie it was - just that the topic was explosions in Japan.

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