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Mt. St. Helens Magma Reaches Surface
daquake writes "Volcanic rock has flowed to the surface of Mount St. Helens' crater, creating a new lava dome after weeks of seismic activity, the bulge had risen at least 330 feet since scientists noticed it September 30. Geologists said there is still a chance of explosive ash eruptions from the 8,364-foot mountain, and the immediate area around the volcano remained closed."
The USDA Forest Service has a live VolcanoCam that refreshes every five minutes. It has produced some pretty neat images over the last couple of weeks. The USDA page goes down fairly often but the image itself is still available so check out this page for image links (including my own) if you ever can't get to the Forest Service page.
http://www.busyweather.com/
For days on end the headlines were "Mt. Helens Blows More Steam", "Still steaming", "Helens still smoking".
/. cliche :)
How truly appropriate is the "Nothing to see here, move along..."
Bet's not over yet. Of course I need KABOOM, ASH AND LAVA before I see any money..
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
there is still a chance of explosive ash eruptions
uh this is a lie. ash died a long time ago. nowadays, people use zsh, bash, or csh.
why dont people just link to Google news?
http://news.google.com/news?q=MOUNT+ST.+HELENS
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Mount Saint Helens
I guess we will need to wait to see if they are in fact right, or if the 55% (KABOOM, ASH AND LAVA) people got it right.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about: the poll
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
as a resident of a "large" unnamed metropolis in close proximity, It is my honor to give my life to the Linux cause, holding my place in secret and not fleeing; in case of alerting the Microsoft Suburbs. We true geeks of Seattle huddle by the glow of our computer screens and share one last minute of Slashdot as we await the inevitable flow of monopoly ending ash.
Let it be said that we went down, without fear as we hastily tried to upload our porn collections to a separate, safer place, so that our lives, and porn collecting will not have been in vain.
This is Seattle,
signing off
Even after they pay me the money, I'm still going to melt all the cities of the world with hot magma.
Also the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network, a parent network to the St Helens area has the daily shots as a loop, with more info here. The earthquake maps plotted out over time are also very interesting.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Where's the KABOOM? There's supposed to be an earth shattering KABOOM!
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
note: the complete loop is approximately 2.5 hours long and you can see that the glow is definitely real across several images
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I bet that is the first time anyone has ever used the words 'Saint', 'tease' and 'blow' in a sentance.
Quick, someone install a Linux powered KaZaA server in the caldera (not "Caldera", caldera... you know, the hole at the top of the volcano).
SCO and RIAA problems... solved.
I, for one, welcome our new molten magma, uh, underlords!
Maybe this dome is really full of little communists with parachutes. They are yelling, screwing, and multiplying in there. Pretty soon they'll erupt and conquer Seattle.
I'm sure I've read this somewhere before. And for once it isn't a previous slashdot article.
If you're going to copy verbatim, credit your source.
Lava
My body's burnin' like a lava from a Mauna Loa
My heart's crackin' like a Krakatoa
Krakatoa, east of Java, molten bodies, fiery lava
Fire, fire, burnin' bright
Turn on your love lava
Turn on your lava light
Fire, oh volcano, over you
Don't let your lava love turn to stone
Keep it burnin'
Keep it burnin' here at home
Oooo Hot Lava
Oooo Hot Lava
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Bourne Again eruptions only occur in the Deep South.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This volcano is surrounded by miles of ash and rock. The lava isn't that fast flowing. It's not going to set anything on fire.
Or we can have a suggestive volcano-related song from Chef. Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava Every time that we make love, thats's lava, hot lava Its lava so hot it makes me sweat, And lava so warm and red and wet, Mountain is rumbling, must find a safer place Soon the wrath of Pele, will fall upon your face Great nectar of the gods, spews rock from Pinatubo Mix with a woman's sweat, makes the lava we know! Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava Every time that we make love, that's lava, hot lava Its lava so hot it makes me sweat, Lava so warm and red and wet Burning through the forest, red, red hot lava flow rolls down the island's body, and into the ocean below When it meets the cool cool water, these are big flows of a living rich Magma flowing into a sepicrious envronment produces pillar lava Argisotic pressure of sea water tends to inhabit the vestal size of the basalt, Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava Every time that we make love, there's lava, hot lava Lava so hot it makes me sweat, Lava so warm and red and wet And after the eruption, we lay dormant for a while Let's just hold each other and talk, For now, Pele sleeps Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava Every time that we make love baby, hot lava Lava so hot it makes me sweat, Lava so warm and red and wet Ooh, baby, every time we kiss, hot lava Every time that we make love there's lava, hot lava Lava so hot it makes me sweat, Lava so warm it makes me sweat
Pretty simple: Tommy Lee Jones will dynamite a high rise conveniently located near the path of the flow and divert the lava into the Pacific.
Don't you watch any movies? This is done all the time.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I actually watched it erupt from about 35 miles away in Rainier, OR. It really really creepy watching a cloud of ash rise into the sky and then disappear... And then we heard a rumbling sound, which is when they said on the news that magma has reached the surface. I thought it was pretty cool. =) At least it's not as bad as the 1980 eruption where everyone had to buy a stockload of air filters for their car... It was a huge mess...
I wonder why people continue building cities and towns close to volcanoes or places with high earthquake risk.
Also, I climbed MSH the day before they shut down the mountain. There were a couple dozen earthquakes while I was on it, including one right when we were at the top. Of course I didn't know it at the time, only when I got home and checked the website. If you're close by, I highly recommend going, even if it doesn't blow while you're there. Supposedly (!!!) it's safe, plus you can see the lava dome and its new little buddy from the visitors center.
The lack of major earth tremors in the last couple of days was also a tell-tale sign. Much less resistance to the molten rock, so it was likely heading to the surface much faster than before.
Mount St. Helens, however, is apparently not the volcano the scientists are most concerned with. Sure, it's interesting and all that, but there's no expectation of anything life-threatening or spectacular. The warning level was downgraded a few days ago, and the vulcanologists now largely expect it to quietly build its lava dome in peace.
Apparently, there's a bit more concern over Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood. Mt. Rainier isn't showing much activity, at the moment, but is expected to be by far the most devastating of all the Cascades volcanos when it does decide to explode. Most of Seattle is built on ash deposits from a prior eruption. An eruption on the OTHER side of the mountain. That thing has absolutely no concern for the environment, whatsoever.
The other volcano getting attention is Mt. Hood. Partly because it is so close to Portland, but also because there's been a bit of activity there the past few years. Nothing major, but definitely signs of life. I've not seen any predictions made as to the sort of timeframe an eruption could be expected, but I think it's not too unreasonable to suggest that recurrent activity means it's likely to be sooner rather than later.
Seattle is apparently spending a small fortune on monitoring the volcanos in its vicinity. Not surprising, given that it IS built on volcanic ash. Maybe someone paid attention when the history class covered Pompeii. Given that the Cascades are part of the so-called "Ring of Fire" (a name to inspire tranquility in anyone!
Even so, volcanos are not to be trifled with and they are (by nature) unpredictable. It's extremely hard to evacuate even relatively small cities on the Southeast coast, whenever there's a hurricane, despite weeks of warning and the fact that these events are so frequent that both officials and residents have considerable experience.
In the worst-possible case, a volcano might give a few day's notice, and the road infrastructure in the Portland-Vancouver-Seattle stretch is not exactly built to handle mass evacuations. It's not entirely clear how many of the bridges in Portland would even be safe, in the event of a mass exodus.
The problem isn't helped by a lack of immediacy. There's no evidence that there's going to be a problem in the near future, so (other than the aforementioned monitoring) there's very little money going into dealing with the problem once it does happen.
(Hey, California's no better. They've not even fixed the damage from the last major earthquake, nevermind made improvements to handle another crisis, even though there's a quite significant risk of another crisis in the comparatively near future. Roads don't build themselves and emergency crews aren't exactly equipt with all-terrain vehicles. Though that would probably not be a bad idea, for high-risk areas.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
"I bet that is the first time anyone has ever used the words 'Saint', 'tease' and 'blow' in a sentance."
Actually.. no. It's funny what you see when you mass download a bunch of.. uh... research material.
"Derp de derp."
The Senate voted against it 99-1. No one supported it.
There are other countries you know, like Canada, People's Republic of China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and all of the European Union.
-Colin
The Senate voted against it 99-1. No one supported it.
That statement is obviously self contradictory.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Hey Bill!
:)
Let me tell you of this new place where you can move Microsoft HQ to... oh wait
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
Because it's a good idea? Because we need to start doing something about C02 emmisions as change on that large a scale takes a decade to implement?
Maybe Kyoto was too big a step to take at once (though I have my doubts about that) but the big problem is the Bush administration wants to ignore the problem entirely.
AccountKiller
There seems to be a little confusion among those who didn't actually read the article, so I might as well waste a few seconds:
There is no lava actually coming out visibly. When they say there is magma at the surface, the geologists really mean it's just below the surface. I guess the point of the article is that this is new growth inside the lava dome, as opposed to lava deep down pushing up the whole dome from beneath. Microsoft is still safe baring any truly cool explosions and there's really no danger of forest fires. Any lava would have a lot of crater filling to do before it spilled over the north face. Plus I read somewhere that the lava tends to come out of Mt. St. Helens pretty viscous (thick crust?) so it doesn't flow well anyways.
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM!
Flash!
After weeks of seismic activity, Mt. St Helens shot off its lava dome that had been building for 20 years.
The solid 5000 ton piece of rock shot off like a cannonball out of the crater of the volcano.
It traveled 100 miles north in a perfect parabola. Then it smashed into the main administrative center of Microsoft corporation outside Redmond.
"All our source code and back-ups were destroyed", said a Microsoft spokescreature. "We'll have to start all over from MS-DOS 6.2 again".
"It's as if Mother Nature was gunning for us and scored a big, fat bulls-eye on her first shot", said VP Steve Ballmer. Mr. Ballmer was directly in the main inpact center when the giant rock hit but he suffered no apparent damage. "No force of nature would ever dare fuck with me!", said Mr. Ballmer. He then announced that in light of the loss of all the source code and support network, there would be 3% reduction in the list price of all current Windows versions selling at full retail.
It's nice to see that graduates from the Bob Saget School of Comedy are finding time to expand on their art form.
"Derp de derp."
They also have a seismogram on the southern side of Mt. Saint Helens that directly posts information onto the internet. While many might not understand the significance of reading it, you can still actually see there is quite a bit of activity.
Seismogram is viewable here.
Interestingly enough, they actually had a seismogram that was on top of the lava dome, but it was destroyed in the first steam explosion at the beginning of the month.
Well sunday May 18, 1980 Was my sister's 13th birthday and I was 10. We lived in Staten Island, New York. When I we learned the news of MT ST Helen's eruputing, I said in ten year old wisdom I'm never moving near there. Where do I live now 24 years later? Yup NW Oregon...in a little town called Dayton. (shakes fist in air) DAMM YOU KARMA GOD'S... But we're to far away to be affected...My 3 year thinks it's cool, every afternoon he goes out with his binoculars to see the volcano. We can't see it, but he has a great imagination....
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
And Poland. You forgot Poland.
You missed the bulge that is building in the The Three Sisters in Central Oregon.
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/03/25/a1
Cut and paste from the above article..
confirming geologists' belief that a large bulge that has grown over the past seven years near the dormant volcanoes could be caused by an upwelling of molten rock miles underground.
The truth shall set you free!
It is formed after all from many small eruptions, such as this one, that deposit lava onto the sides of the volcano and thereby causing it to grow larger. IANAG (I Am Not A Geologist).
What's the big deal other than its interesting to watch it unfold infront of your eyes, and it probably will keep on doing this for some time to come so now isn't your last chance to see this happen. Granted with all the new technology available to us it can provide us with some valuable insight into the inner workings of the earth, but it seems the geologist know exactly whats going on here.
Other than these few scientific points of interest, there really is not much point in sucking up this story from every single media outlet. Its business as usual for the volcano and time we worried about more important things (at least those we can influence).
And no I don't live on the other side of the world. I'm from just a wee bit North of the border.
--
Registered .sig quotient : 1337
It's not a very good novel (in fact, it's downright ludicrous, as it's one of those where all the world's terrorists seem to be working together as one unified group, a concept which Parker and Stone are ridiculing in 'Team America') and it's insanely right-wing, ultra-militaristic and reactionary, as such books are wont to be, but Robinson might now get some extra sales just because he was lucky with the timing.
You must think in Russian.
One of the coolest things to happen with the volcano cam recently is that night has gotten slightly more interesting. For the first couple weeks, all you could see at night was a dark noisy image. In the last couple days, a faint glow from the magma in the dome has been visisble.
Click here to read too much about my personal life
I think it's very irresponsible reporting on what is, in effect, a large bomb in the heart of America. Using these news articles it would be perfectly possible for me, and any evil muslim terrorists, to find my way to this device and maybe find a way of using it in a terrorist atrocity.
./'s would join me and petition the US government to "For gods sake keep the location of these massively dangerous feature of the landscape out of the hands of terrorists and their locations secret". All scientific research on these evil weapons of terror should cease immediately and recognition of Mt St Helens as a Volcano should immeditely result in lengthy prison sentence in some off shore detention facility.
I would hope all
Seems to work for me (OS X). Just make an empty directory, drop this script in it and run. Remember, slashdot mangles posts so go to my blog for the un-mangled script. Cheers!
m shvolcanocam.jpg -O $name.jpg
#!/bin/bash
while (:); do
export name=`date +%m.%d.%y-%H:%M:%S`
wget http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/images/
#sleeps for 15 minutes
sleep 900
done
I've been monitoring the volcanocams this morning and noticed one spot near the top of the dome, that has been "glowing" pretty consistantly. Take a look at:
s / (has archives)
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/
and
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/image
Keep an eye on the one steam plume on the upper right of the crater. As the sun goes down on the camera (roughly 22:00 Oct 12), you can see a prominant reddish spot that remains all the way through, well, the time I write this.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!