Live cameras in Yellowstone National Park, United States

Yellowstone National Park, set up in 1872 as the first national park in the world, covers a high plateau mostly in northwest Wyoming, reaching into Montana and Idaho. Beneath it lies one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth. The last lava flows came about 70,000 years ago, but heat from below still drives the park's geysers, hot springs, mud pots and steam vents, the largest collection of hydrothermal features anywhere. Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and wide valleys full of bison and elk round out the picture.

The three cameras on this page are run by the USGS Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), and each takes a new picture about every 15 minutes. Two watch Biscuit Basin, north of Old Faithful: one from the boardwalk toward Black Diamond Pool, where a hydrothermal explosion threw rocks and mud in July 2024, and a newer one on the monitoring station tower, installed after another explosion there in June 2026. The third looks south-southeast over Yellowstone Lake from a tower near Fishing Bridge. These views help scientists catch steam bursts and changes in hot springs, which are a far more frequent hazard than any eruption. YVO uses the USGS alert scheme (Normal, Advisory, Watch, Warning, with an aviation color code); as of early October 2026 Yellowstone was at Normal/Green.

When to look

• The park keeps Mountain Time (UTC-7, UTC-6 in summer).
• Cold mornings make steam plumes taller and easier to see.
• Snow can arrive in any month at this elevation, and winter coats the basins white.
• Yellowstone Lake usually freezes over in winter and thaws in late spring.

A nearby note: Old Faithful, a short drive south of Biscuit Basin, has its own National Park Service live stream with eruption predictions, and erupts roughly every 90 minutes. Norris Geyser Basin, home of Steamboat Geyser, the tallest active geyser in the world, lies farther north.

Sources: Webcams - Wyoming (USGS) · A new camera is now observing activity in Biscuit Basin (USGS YVO) · Yellowstone - USGS · Old Faithful Streaming Webcam - Yellowstone Forever.