Mount Saint Helens Behaving Oddly

jd writes "According to the New Scientist magazine, Mount Saint Helens has built in the space of a few months a lava dome larger than one that had been built over the previous six years. The growth rate is about four cubic meters a second. If the dome keeps growing at this rate, geologists expect it to collapse, triggering a major eruption. Surface activity is not the only thing geologists are monitoring. Seismographs of the volcano show dozens of tremors a minute."

Comments

Re:It would be cool

[Babbster]

Yuck, yuck, yuck. We [in Portland] got hit with a bunch of ash during a couple of relatively minor eruptions back in 1980 (the first one had the wind blowing away from us) and the ash was a horrible pain. Besides the necessity of wearing surgical-type masks (unlike snow, breathing in that fine powdery stuff is "a bad thing") while the crap is blowing around, the clean-up is a bitch. Since it doesn't melt, you have to manually clean it out of seams and cracks in structures and cars - just plain awful.

I'm sure you were just kidding but even joking about it makes me nervous. :)