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Mystery Ash Clouds Rain In Parts of Washington, Oregon
Inland parts of Oregon and Washington, as well as Idaho, have experienced a strange, murky rain today that contains what seems to be volcanic ash, though ash from which volcano isn't completely clear. Experts said they are checking out several possible explanations including a recent volcanic eruption in Mexico and one in Russia. The weather service said the rainstorm may have passed through some dust or volcanic ash as it moved west. Walla Walla County's emergency management staff posted a statement on its Facebook page that the ash is likely from Volcano Shiveluch in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, some 3,000 miles away. Volcano Shiveluch spewed an ash plume about 22,000 feet high in late January, the statement said.... CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, meanwhile, pointed to an eruption Wednesday of a volcano in southwestern Colima, Mexico, as another potential source of the dirty rain. That volcano is more than 2,000 miles away from the region.
Time points out that other theories include leftover ash from last year’s wildfires in Oregon in Idaho.
It's from the buried NSA facility in Yakima, They're blowing the pipes.
It only hit Hermiston. Mostly it was farther north.
Having already seen the media reports hours ago, it is already known that it is from Siberia, on the Pacific coast. This is where most of the rain in the NW comes from.
People speculating Mexico or Guatamala are simply new to the meteorology of the region. To local sources a glance at a recent eruption map makes and it is instantly obvious there is 1 known candidate, and it would explain it perfectly.
("Just rain" in my part of Oregon, too)
People speculating Mexico or Guatamala are simply new to the meteorology of the region. To local sources a glance at a recent eruption map makes and it is instantly obvious there is 1 known candidate, and it would explain it perfectly.
("Just rain" in my part of Oregon, too)
Same here in Bend. It's been pretty windy, trees falling. Nowhere like the rain west of the mountains of course. But there were fires all around last summer. No dirty rain falling here. Hell, at 50+ degrees it's almost been like a spring rain. So sorry for our mountain snow pack, however.
Siberia though, makes more sense. The jet stream seems to be pushing a lot of air our way. Not just dirty Beijing air, either, it seems. Or is it... ? :)
I grew up in Spokane and was there when St. Helens erupted. That was ash fall.
Heh, it would be pretty easy to figure out if it was wooden ash or volcanic ash.
Yeah, lack of even simple chemical analysis -- let alone spectral at this point in time. It's disturbing. I've been tracking this odd phenomenon, I even had a Slashdot submission typed up about it. No, not about the cloud/substance itself, about the reaction.
We seem to be a whole country filled with cell phone cameras, social media sharers, windshield wipers, action news reporters, meteorologists running computer models. Our news sources (correctly) posit that it is likely volcanic ash, and the comments on the news stories are peppered with the usual shallow pond tripe about chemtrails, Fukushima crap. And a news item here and there ends with some expert musing obviously, "without a chemical analysis it's difficult to tell..."
Every one is seeming to allude to a a series of samples collected and sent to a lab by the Weather Service. We're not curious enough to go out and get the stuff ourselves, that's the job of experts. We're all waiting --- not for more information, such as preliminary results of base composition... nope, we will wait for the source to be scientifically determined beyond doubt, at which point a press conference will be held.
Here is an interesting mystery that has dropped right into our lap. How many chem labs are in the affected area? How many undergrad students, Universities laboratories? How many mass spectrometers?
It's like the Dog That Didn't Bark. Blah blah blah, no actual boots on the ground analysis. News blah, wait for expert results blah.
In a world with more technical capability than ever before,
less than ever was actually attempted.
Could be fallout from a Transit Cloud
Or residue from a Brain Cloud
"You have some time left. You have some life left.
My advice to you is, live it well."
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I'm right here in Walla Walla County and I can say that I noticed odd things beginning the night before last following one of the warmest chinooks I can remember in my life, it reached 72 F outside my house after being in the low 30s under 12 hours before. Within hours after that began, odd AM radio reception disturbances that came and went in waves from total static to unbelievably good and seemingly overpowered sometimes within seconds and other times over maybe 15 minutes started. I noticed an odd metallic aftertaste when I woke up the next morning (unlike blood or iron), all of these things happened before I even knew any of this was going on. I do a little playing around with software defined radio and radio telescopy/aircraft communication apps and I saw readings that lit up whole areas very high up nor could I receive any plane comms which was pretty unusual.
The volcanic ash story seems pretty specious to me, I'm more inclined to believe the TIME hypothesis of wildfire ash because the chinook was very abrupt and warm, I can grasp how an odd temperature inversion in such a short amount of time along with high speed winds might pick up heavier ash particles that wouldn't normally travel, lift them up very high, then drop them over my area. Volcanic ash doesn't travel large distances and drop suddenly in a small area all at once. Even if it did, I would think that there would have been much, much more present. This stuff in the rain was also not at pulverized as volcanic ash, I still have a vial of Mt. St. Helens' ash my parents gathered nearby from when I was really young. This stuff was also a good deal darker. I can say that it does not smell like soot, it has a faint metallic/garlic one but it doesn't permeate the area like I'd think it would. Just wanted to give a "man-on-the-ground" report for my fellow /.ers.