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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.
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
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.
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...
Bush declares the volcano part of the "Axis of Lava", declares "War on Volcanos" and sends bombers to the area to eliminate the threat.
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!
Google news summary: /. beat ABC news to the story. Take that!
/. readers can actually do math...
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.
Good to know that other
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
Wow, if I reported it *now* I could beat them both!
Sorry, couldn't resist...
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
If Yellowstone blows, you should be studying theology, not geology. :-)
..don't panic
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.
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.