Mysterious Hot Spots

This picture comes from a piece in the Santa Barbara News-Press about some mysterious heat sources revealed by a landslide in the mountains northeast of here. I apologise, this may be a subscribers-only link.

This hit the news here early in the summer when a small forest fire that was caused by these "hot spots" led to their discovery. A team of geologists has recently revisted the location in a Wilderness Area in the Los Padres National Forest. Four vents have been measured at a temperature between 400 and 500 degrees F. For some reason, the geologists seem very reticent to call this a standard geothermal location, though they see steam, smell sulphur, and say they can hear water boiling down in the vents. One geologist has "... hypothesized that a chemical reaction in the shale is creating the heat, fueled by oxygen in the air and in the water seeping through the rocks. He notes that the slide is hottest on the side where the wind blows through, stoking a kind of blast furnace."

They are also keeping the location a secret, frustrating a lot of us who would like to run out and see it!