Don’t let this put any wrinkles in your lovely Jackson Hole adventure, but it’s possible that a giant supervolcano will someday soon burst beneath the sandal-clad feet of thousands of hapless tourists, effectively eliminating much of the life in the western United States and ushering in a nuclear winter. As the closest Jackson Hole lodging to Yellowstone National Park, we’re always concerned about natural conditions that may affect your next visit to the land of geysers and bison. And so it is only natural that we concern ourselves with the Yellowstone supervolcano, which could pretty much go off any day now, obliterating much of the American Northwest and making life unpleasant for a lot of other folks. The volcano is among the largest silica-rich volcano fields in the world. It has lain dormant for 70,000 years, and scientists say the chance of it actually erupting is extremely slim—one in 700,000, which is actually slightly more likely than we’re comfortable with. If it were to go off, the resulting explosion would be one thousand times as powerful as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. The initial conflagration would kill as many as 90,000 people instantly and release a ten-foot layer of molten ash a thousand miles from the park. Sulfuric gases released into the atmosphere would mix with the planet’s water vapor. A gassy haze would settle over the country, both dimming the sunlight and cooling temperatures. The Daily Mail, which supplied most of the information for this blog post, also included this cheery artist’s rendering of the catastrophe, in which Yellowstone is transformed into some sort of desolate, Mordor-like hellscape. On the bright side, however, we have a deal going on, so there’s that. Enter the promo code "Secret20" when booking your motel stay and get 20 percent off! (This deal starts September 1.) Enjoy the rest of your summer!