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Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased
DarkHand writes "Mount St. Helens has become even more unstable in the last few hours. The U.S. Geological Surveys Cascades Volcano Observatory has increased the volcanic alert around the volcano to level 2 and released a press release: 'Over night, seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has accelerated significantly, which increases our level of concern that current unrest could culminate in an eruption. We are increasing the alert level to the second of three levels [...]. Earthquakes are occurring at about four per minute. The largest events are approaching Magnitude 2.5 and they are becoming more frequent. All are still at shallow levels in and below the lava dome that grew in the crater between 1980 and 1986. This suggests that the ongoing intense earthquake activity has weakened the dome, increasing the likelihood of explosions or perhaps the extrusion of lava from the dome.' The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated. The ground is now literally constantly rumbling."
"Get outta there, it's gonna blow!"
.. if only to shout "Leonard Bernstein" at this point.
All of these hurricanes, tornadoes earthquakes, floods, and now volcano eruptions...when do the plagues and locusts start happening?
Do people still remember the show Dante's Peak? It had a real cool legged robot which went into the volcano to collect samples. Wonder if these cool and useful machines are still being used or is everything remote sensing now?
Memo to self: Don't live anywhere near an active volcano.
I could find a way to make Micro$oft seem responsible...
KABOOM!
...but I've always thought of volcanos as Mother Earth's acne.
As I was watching Katie Couric interview one of the scientists this morning, I just kept thinking that these guys are all waiting for this big head to pop so they can collect measurements on the pus.
Sorry, kinda icky, but these are my thoughts. Mod down if you have a weak stomach.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Washington possesses weapons of mass destruction. They must disarm immediately or face regime change.
Do you want the first warning to be a mushroom cloud over Washington State Park?
I'm sick of all these damn hurricanes, honey. Where else can we live?
I want to get as far away from this place as possible. How about Washington?
Works for me, let's go!
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
I love hurricanes ... but then I live in the midwest so they won't directly affect me :).
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
By an interesting coincidence, I was born near Mt. St. Helens during the first eruption. Yes...as I was delivered from the womb, the city was covered with ash and filled with the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth *cough* I mean, sweeping and washing of streets.
Maybe with this next eruption, instead of merely being born, I'll actually get a life.
...our scientists are no longer able to monitor and analyze any vulcanic activity online.
Folks: you're on your own.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Have we positively ruled out terrorism as a cause of this seismic activity at this point?
There will be a big white flag coming out of the crater reading "BOOM!" any minute now...
Dont watch it for too long or when the cammera start broadcasting again there will be an ant really close to the lense making the ant look over 10 feet tall scaring everyone who watches. On the news that night, all the anchors will say I for one welcome our new invading overlords.
Google news summary:
/. beat ABC news to the story. Take that!
News results for mount st. helens - View today's top stories
Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased - Slashdot - 9 minutes ago
Experts Predict Mount St. Helens Eruption - ABC News - 10 minutes ago
Yes, that's right.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Bush declares the volcano part of the "Axis of Lava", declares "War on Volcanos" and sends bombers to the area to eliminate the threat.
Or would that be a magma flow war?
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
seems not to be broadcasting now. Anyone knows why...
/.ed it.
Yeah, you just
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
It could one of two things; Either the volcano's emitting a hallucingenic purple fog or it's a foggy dawn. I can't say for certain which one of the two it is.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I, for one, welcome our new Decepticon overlords.
-Stephen
...Bush will blame the eruption on Al Qaeda and send National Guard troops to Washington state then completely fail to find any lava of mass destruction.
MMMmmmmmm....erotic cakes!!! Homer J. Simpson - Treehouse of Horror VI
that Condelezza Rice would be trolling webforums.... Quite a step a up.
If Yellowstone blows, you should be studying theology, not geology. :-)
..don't panic
I'm hoping it's really foggy out there this morning, because the image that I'm getting is just a very soothing blue color.
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday
I hate when my carbonated planet goes flat...
Clearly, Mt. St. Helens is near eruption because it is starved for virgin sacrifices!
I did Hurricanes Camille, Agnes, and Hugo on the East Coast. I've done tornadoes and blizzards in Michigan. I was in LA for huge brush and forest fires, the Rodney King riots, and the Northridge Quake. I now live in Portland, OR. Yea.
On the "harbingers of doom" ratings scale, hearing I'm moving to town is like running into Jim Cantore in a hotel lobby.
The descriptions of the tsunamis were incredible (I know it's a fiction book, but still...): 100 ft. high waves travelling at high speeds, one after another. Sure, some buildings may survive one of those, but several?
Good book, but had to give it back to the library before I could finish it.
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
Last year or the year before when they had the (false) lahar warning for Rainier, a friend of mine -- a 911 dispatcher -- was on a date when he got the emergency page. This woman, quite the clingy "me-first" type, got uppity with him for looking at his pager. He told her he had to go, there was an emergency. She didn't believe him. He stood up in the middle of the restaraunt and said, loudly, "Mt. Fucking-Rainier is erupting...call a cab.". That was their first (and last) date. :-)
As an aside, anyone remember Jim Foreman (news reporter) doing a live broadcast from Harborview doing his normal melodramatic report that "dozens of casualties are being flown in now...we'll be here to report on it"? Good times.
Save America from Volcanoe's, Vote Bush 2004!
That soothing blue color is just there to make sure you don't see anything that could alarm or disrupt you this morning, like for instance an erupting volcano.
(Thank you D.A.!)
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I love gamma radiation, but I live in an abandoned lead mine...
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
"At least we'll die doing what we love...inhaling molten rock"
-Homer
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated.
Somebody Else's Problem seismograph? What does it do, make the volcano disappear if it becomes too inconvenient?
Looks like Mount St. Helens is about to defrag.
Now it looks like a million-seat football stadium
...with a cool halftime show.
I am so smart!
I am so smart!
S-M-R-T!
I mean S-M-A-R-T!
I was ten years old living down in Vancouver, WA back in 1980. We had a pristine view of the mountain from our back yard and would constantly have "eruption barbeques" at the house.
;)
During one of the many ash-falls that used to regularly dust us, my brother and I ran out one morning to play in the new ash before our parents woke up. There was about 1-2 inches coating everything, like new snow, and it had just rained making all of the ash into an interesting clay-like consistency.
Kids being kids, my little brother and I ran out to the driveway and started writing our names with our fingers into the ash covering my dad's brand new 1 day old VW Scirroco in the driveway. It started out with "Hi" and "Cool" and progressed to "Van Halen kicks ass" and "KISS rules" and liberal scrawlings of "dork", "shit", "Tony sucks dick", drawings of boobies and penises, you get the idea.
Well, we got into a hell of a lot of trouble when my dad saw the car when he had to wipe all of the ash off to drive to work. Our trouble later escalated when he discovered that, after going through a car wash to rinse off the rest, everything that we had written on his car was now premanently scratched into the paint and windows of his car, ash being a fine gritty silicate. Our dad's co-workers ribbed him endlessly about his "custom paint job" as it took him several weeks before he could get his car repainted and the windows replaced.
All told, a few thousand dollar "oops" for us kids
----- And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...UNLESS.
Live in the northwest: Volcanoes
Live in the southwest: Earthquakes
Live on the east coast: Hurricanes
Live in the south/central part of the country: Tornadoes
Live in the north: Blizzards
Live in Indiana: You have to live in Indiana