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Giant Rock Growing in Mount St. Helens' Crater
An anonymous reader writes to mention a CNN article about the huge geological formation growing in Mount St. Helens' crater. From the article: "The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day, said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. The rock in the crater began growing last November, steadily moving west and pushing rock and other debris out of its way as it goes." Scientists think the mountain will eventually replace the lave dome blown out by the original 1980 eruption.
Maybe it's just happy to see you.
this one time in geometry class i developed a 'huge formation', and then the teacher called me to work out a problem on the board!
the girls all laughed at me. hopefully mt. st. helens won't have that problem.
It was on a Sunday if I recall (I was all of 9 years old)and I slept right through it. Some people claimed they could hear it, and you could see a funny shaped cloud on the horizon if you squinted real hard. I kept waiting for the predicted ash fall, but it never got as far as Seattle.
I visited the mountain some years later, and I can't begin to describe how small I felt looking at the devestation. Miles and miles of forests flattened, all the trees lined up in the same direction, following the contours of the hills. Everything coated in a layer of fine ash. Scary, in a "look how freakin' insignificant you are" kinda way.
If you ever go, be sure to bring a lantern and visit Ape Caves, a 5 mile long lava tube near the base of the mountain. It's an easy hike even if you've never been in a cave before, and unlike most caves the sole improvement is a rickety metal staircase leading down in the middle. You can hike 2.5 miles up and exit out where it collapsed, and/or hike 2.5 miles down and it gets really narrow and stops. (By "up" and "down" I just mean the thing runs down the side of the mountain, so one end is higher than the other, not that it goes straight up and down.)
As for this latest development, 5 feet per day?! Wow, that's pretty dang fast. I'd heard a new lava dome was growing, but this speed is certainly a new develpment. Still, it will take a long time to get back to its former size. Over 1,000 vertical feet of mountain got blown off the top, and most of one side slid away.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Maybe so.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing its summit from 9,677 feet (2,950 m) to 8,364 feet (2,550 m) in elevation. Cite. The mountain lost 1313 ft in its 1980 eruption. The article mentions the rock is rising 4-5 ft per day, and is 300 ft tall. It has 1003 ft to go, or about 250 days, assuming it continues at the same rate -- an unlikely assumption however because to replace the cone, it would need to not only rise to its former height, it would have to fill in the mile wide crater as well.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
TFA links to a "volcano cam"
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/
An eight-year-old could have offered us as much insight.
Well, the difference is the eight year-old would be guessing.
The USGS stating that it's stable now but is capable of changing at any moment without warning is useful information, because it makes explicit that if something terrible is to happen they won't be able to see indicators 24-48 hours in advance and thus warn people away. If you want to get away, there is no precursor activity that will tell you when, so you just basically have to go and wait, potentially for a long time.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I was pretty young.. but I sort of remember..
It was a Sunday (for the first bigger eruption in 1980). We were supposedly in the 'safe zone', but we all know how that went. We had just gotten up out of the tents when the ground shook continuously for minutes like an earthquake.. Then we could see a grey cloud rising up near the horizon.
Very quickly, the cloud appeared to go so high that it was over us. There was lightning at the edge of the cloud. Rain began to fall immediately, I remember it was warm and black.. Looking closely at a drop you could see the individual ash particles.
By that time, we had pulled up the tent with everything in side it and threw it in the back of the truck in a single motion.
The ride back to Yakima, WA was slow, and the visibility was just about zero. It was hard to breath and the roads were jammed with panic'd people.. We later found out that the campground we were at was covered in a large amount of burning hot mud.
When we got home there was ash everywhere, and it stayed dark for what seemed like days. I remember wearing a mask for weeks afterwards to go outside.
Giant paper.
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