Mount St. Helens Lets Off Some Steam

jdray writes "The cube farm is all a twitter right now, as Mt. St. Helens is spewing out a steam plume, and you can see if from our building. The cam for the volcano seems to be down, but we just saw a news helicopter from KATU, one of our local news stations, headed that direction. They should have some content up shortly." Other readers suggest: KOIN, KOIN webcams, Kiro TV, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, or CNN.

Comments

Mount Hood next?

[jd]

According to KATU, Mount Hood has been experiencing a number of quakes for some years now. The chances of an eruption over the next few decades is put at 1:15 to 1:30.

Mount Hood is awfully big. Obviously, it'd depend on the size of the explosion, but the potential exists for something that would make Mount St. Helen's 1980 event look like something mild.

Despite comments by other posters on this, before, I can't help but feel that the Cascades affect each other. Even if there is no direct connection, the mere proximity means that the internal structure of each volcano may be affected by earthquakes caused by the others.

Mount Hood hasn't (so far) had a major increase in pressure build-up. However, isn't it within the realms of possibility that the Mount St. Helens quakes may block vents, compress the magma, etc? Sure, the shock waves haven't been big (so far), but that's relative. It might not take a whole lot to set Mount Hood off.

The Cascades are part of the so-called "Ring of Fire", which is a massive chain of volcanos. KATU talked about it having 3/4s of all the volcanos on Earth. That's a lot. I don't know if this Mexican volcano that's also gone off is also part of the Ring, but if it is, I (for one) would be very much in favour of increased monitoring over the whole of the Ring. Things seem a little too active, right now, and it probably isn't sensible to just sit back and wait.

Even if the probability of any further eruptions in the near future are extremely low, and even if the probability of either of these events triggering further volcanic activity elsewhere is minimal, it might be prudent to make sure of that.