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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/
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"
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!
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
And Poland. You forgot Poland.
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.
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Registered .sig quotient : 1337
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!