Molehill Mountain Detected From Space

SEWilco writes: "A four-inch mound was detected in Oregon recently near the Three Sisters volcanoes. Unlike a molehill, it's 10 miles across and was detected by radar from a satellite. The USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory compared two radar images which were taken four years apart and produced this image of the uplift. A USGS statement says the cause is uncertain, but a new pool of magma is suspected. There are no signs of pending eruptions."

Comments

Hehe!

[The Queen]

I don't mod. But if I did, you'd get a 'Funny' out of me for that one.

Your assignment now is to draw up a movie poster for that. Maybe you can get it filmed - that's a Troma title if ever I heard one. :-)

"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton

Looks more like an earthquake or something

[DeepDarkSky]

The ringed pattern makes it look more like a ripple, with crests and troughs, and seem to have been something energetic that happened that had the energy radiated outward in a circle.

Re:Looks more like an earthquake or something

[peccary]

I think you've misunderstood -- which is easy to do given the way they represent the data. Those color bands are like countour lines on a topographical map. There is 1 cm of uplift from one red line to the next, and another 1 cm to the subsequent red line, and so on. So what you're seeing is not a set of ripples radiating out from a central impact, but is a series of lines painted on a bulge, as if someone pushed their fingers up through a balloon.

Re:Except

[stilwebm]

I just hope for the sake of the Pacific Northwest that it doesn't end up being a caldera volcano like Yellowstone.

Look at the purty pic-a-ma-tures

[tomzyk]

You didn't read the text that went along with the graphic:

Each full color band from blue to red represents about 2.8 cm (slightly more than 1 inch) of ground movement in the direction of the radar satellite. In this case, four concentric color bands show that the surface moved toward the satellite (mostly upward) by as much as 10 cm (about 4 inches) sometime between August 1996 and October 2000...

It isn't "rippled" ground; it is a single raise in the land. The colorscheme they used is just confusing.

Re:Eruption from beginning to end?

[Zara2]

I read it too and it is one of my earliest childhood memories as I was living in (you guessed it) Spokane Washington at the time. (In case you don't believe me I was born in Sacred Heart hospitol.) I was extremely young so I don't remember much but I remember the sky being dark and ash all over the place. On the car particularly. Hope you are one of those people that checks up on your posts in your user profile. ;)

Except

[fisternipply]

There are no signs of pending eruptions."

Except for the giant pool of magma forming underneath the pacific northwest, that could be a sign.

Re:Eruption from beginning to end?

[Yazeran]

Yes. Ground movement before eruptions is comonplace and well documented. Several active volcanoes worldwide have tiltmeters and laser-rangefinders mounted all over the volcano, and small uplifts / enlargements of the volcano is observed before most eruptions. (for reference see Hawaii Volcano observatory update)

similarly, in Italy near Vesuvius (which blew up in AD. 79) ground movement in the sorounding area has been observed. Particularly near the town of Pozzuli which is situated above a magma-chamber. In the last 20 years the ground has been moving mostly upwards more than a meter! so that previously sunken Roman temples once again is above the water.

Yours Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer!