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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.

47 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. NSA reactor waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's from the buried NSA facility in Yakima, They're blowing the pipes.

    1. Re:NSA reactor waste by Nethead · · Score: 1

      The Ball Bearing plant was shut down a few years ago, the NRO said so. That's why all those huge dishes are still there and move from time to time.

      https://www.google.com/maps/pl...

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  2. Mystery? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Seems like chemical analysis of the ash could solve this mystery pretty easily.

    1. Re:Mystery? by hawguy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Seems like chemical analysis of the ash could solve this mystery pretty easily.

      Anyone that watches TV knows they just need to put some it into the analyzer and they'll have the source of the ash in minutes. I don't understand why don't they just do that?

    2. Re:Mystery? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately scientists cannot afford the instruments used by Hollywood rich people :-(

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    3. Re:Mystery? by michelcolman · · Score: 1

      Obligatory xkcd.

  3. Potheads by storkus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh, come on, Oregon and Washington LEGALIZED IT, it's just some pot festival sent too much smoke and ash up from western WA/OR. A quick THC test should tell you all you need to know.

    1. Re:Potheads by Bathroom+Humor · · Score: 1

      Mayhaps Sasquatch wanted to join in on the fun, but didn't quite grasp the concept of pot, so they just grabbed all the leaves and shrubbery they could find and puff puff'd up a storm.

    2. Re:Potheads by rogoshen1 · · Score: 2

      hah. eastern oregon and wash are about as red and conservative as you'll find in the US. They are closer to Texas (sans austin) politically than anywhere else.
      (Source: grew up in Milton-Freewater, just south of Walla Walla)

    3. Re:Potheads by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      hah. eastern oregon and wash are about as red and conservative as you'll find in the US.

      And red-state conservatives don't smoke pot?

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    4. Re:Potheads by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure they do. They want "officer discretion" so when little Georgie (Bush) does coke, he'll be let off with an unofficial warning that doesn't touch his permanent record, but little Nigger has a dime bag of pot, and he gets 10 years in jail, or pleads guilty to felony distribution for a $100 fine and time served. The punishment doesn't sound like much, except never getting to vote again, or own a firearm.

      That's how the red states roll. Neo-Apartheid. I was born white in one, and had plenty of friends of various ethnic backgrounds. The big lie is that it doesn't happen, mainly told by people who have seen it happen, but refuse to believe it because it would make them "evil" to endorse and condone it.

    5. Re:Potheads by blue+trane · · Score: 2

      Luckily there are recreational marijuana shops in eastern Wa, and some wildernesses where you can smoke pot out in the open for days without encountering humans. Screw the political retards; this land was made for you and me.

    6. Re:Potheads by SgtAaron · · Score: 1

      Why would that be? Walla Walla and its surroundings produce lots of good wine. Plenty of anesthetic to soothe your pain. :-)

    7. Re:Potheads by Guy+From+V · · Score: 1

      Muddy Frogwater

    8. Re:Potheads by NetNed · · Score: 2

      White guilt is "insightful" on a story about ash clouds??? WTF happened to slashdot???

    9. Re:Potheads by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, truthfully exposing actual current racism is "white guilt" and should be dismissed and ignored.

      Not sure how it hit 5 inciteful, but it's a on-topic response to the previous comment, which was about drug use in conservative states.

      Is your comment any more on-topic on a post about ash? No? Then that makes you a hypocrite. And dismissing the race situation pegs you as a conservative (and yes, a libertarian is a "conservative" by the US definitions, and a "neo-liberal" by international definitions).

    10. Re:Potheads by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      Funny post. The replies, on the other hand, really flew off on a tangent.

      sr

      "There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."
      Yogi Berra

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  4. Re:Yellowstone! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A Yellowstone supereruption would wipe out two-thirds of the northern hemisphere. If that have gone off, ashy rain would be the least of our problems.

  5. Meanwhile in Oregon by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    It's just raining, like it usually does with normal wet drop of water. No sign of gunk on my windscreen.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re:Meanwhile in Oregon by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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)

    2. Re:Meanwhile in Oregon by SgtAaron · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Meanwhile in Oregon by Aighearach · · Score: 2

      I was in Ellensburg for St. Helens, it was dark for 3 days. The government said to wait for test results before going outside, in case of deadly gas, but we just waited until we saw birds taking dust baths. My family moved south about the time the roads were clear.

    4. Re:Meanwhile in Oregon by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Wet weather with wind from the south generally starts from the South China Sea, in the Bay of Thailand area, comes past Hawaii, and makes a break north off the coast of California.

      Most of our wet weather is colder, and comes via the Bering Sea or the Gulf of Alaska.

      When we get weather that is significantly from the South of us it is when the Great Basin spills a dry high pressure zone over onto us. Then it can be from Mexico or further, via Arizona.

      Anything coming in off the ocean will have come mostly from the West, regardless of the local wind direction after it makes landfall. Because, the Earth spins.

  6. Leftover Ash? by hedgemage · · Score: 4, Informative

    Uh, the Northwest is a big place and the air is anything but stagnant. We entered the wet season a couple of months ago, so the chances of the particulates being locally originated is laughable since everything has been pretty moist for weeks. The Time article cites no sources about "ash leftover from last year's fires" so I'm going to assume that someone was either pulling something completely out of context or out of their anal cavity or both.

    1. Re:Leftover Ash? by ITRambo · · Score: 1

      You nailed it. How can last years wildfires produce volcanic ash? Definitely sounds like a pulled-from-ass level of comment. Fine ash blown west from a Russian eruption is more logical.

    2. Re:Leftover Ash? by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      Presumably they found that on the comments page.

  7. obvious by slashmydots · · Score: 2

    It's either time-traveling ashes or an alien spaceship that burned up in our atmosphere. Come on, I figured that out in seconds.

  8. yeah, you got us, it's the chemtrail thing by bazorg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Some of the sheeple I monitor on FB figured out that "they" are spreading thought control gas using airplane fuel. At the last meeting of the Illuminati board I asked if we could contaminate fuel supplies worldwide why weren't we doing that with regular car fuel instead... would reach more people rather than just those under flight paths. Then one of the guys came up with the idea of adding the thought control formula to erupting volcanoes so that it's harder to trace it to us. I still think it's a bit inefficient and too 007-super-villain way of doing things but the higher ups always know best. oh well. Back to fudging the lottery numbers for next weekend I guess.

    1. Re:yeah, you got us, it's the chemtrail thing by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      fnord

  9. And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

    It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.

    1. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.

      Update: this morning I went outside and everything was covered with dirt subtle in some areas, I started to think about this article so checked out my white truck, it's covered in dirt. Ya we got something dumped on us.

    2. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.

      I started to think about this article so checked out my white truck, it's covered in dirt. Ya we got something dumped on us.

      Dirt is misleading it's of a blackish nature on a white surface, I took a magnetic to it but inconclusive.

    3. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Guy+From+V · · Score: 1

      Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.

    4. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.

      Tri-Cities.

    5. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Guy+From+V · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I was wondering about it maybe being magnetic because of the weird AM band disturbances...I even got some small spikes on my SDR way down into the ELF band where there isn't ever anything. The K garlicy smell was wild, too.

    6. Re:And I stayed indoors most of the day, by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.

      Tri-Cities.

      I said that off the cuff, I sent another reply that didn't seem to make it:
      60 miles away from you and it was 63 degrees yesterday while the norm has been 40-50.

  10. Re:Look out, here we go again by sumdumass · · Score: 1

    Nah.. this administrationand science departments will just clsim it is global warming andvdemand some new powers.

  11. Are amateur scientists EXTINCT? by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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>
    1. Re:Are amateur scientists EXTINCT? by chmod+a+x+mojo · · Score: 1

      Maybe because it's not that easy?

      OK, so I go out and collect enough muddy water in a non-contaminated vessel, and happen to have a microscope powerful enough to see particulate matter that can be airborn for 2-3k+ Miles. Say it turns out to be volcanic in origin... then what? I personally have access to a XRD machine, but scans would show.... nothing since volcanic glass is amorphous ( no crystal structure ). Maybe the XRF could pick out a few peaks from microcrystalline structures, but it's highly unlikely that I can get a fine enough focus unless I luck out with a very large light chunk of ash... but funding for the sciences has been going down steadily for over a decade ( cut 80%+ in the last 12 years here ) and the XRF machine has been down for almost as long. We don't even have a mass spectrometer... the only reason our XRD machine is still running is a large school in the next state occasionally sends us stuff to XRD, and will run some of our stuff on their SEM.

      Most people wouldn't even have access to a powerful microscope, much less any of the other geochemical tools needed.

      Then say I did get same data of chemical / mineral composition, where is the geochemical database for recently recently erupted volcanoes? I can't say with any type of certainty that this eruption came from X volcano since it closely matches the rock compositions from the last eruption 600 years ago. Even data from 6mos - 1 year+ is sketchy since it would be more than possible that the melt from this eruption is chemically distinct from the prior one ( hence why it stopped for a while, then restarted ).

      TL;DR: The most a lay person could really do is identify the general origin as being volcanic / or possibly wood in origin, and only if they happen to have a REALLY strong microscope.

      --
      To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
    2. Re:Are amateur scientists EXTINCT? by MtViewGuy · · Score: 1

      I'm actually surprised that someone at university in the Pacific Northwest has not taken a sample of the rainwater and do some chemical analysis. If it is volcanic ash, they need to compare against the volcanic ash spewed out from Sakurajima just east of the city of Kagoshima in Japan or the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, both of which have erupted in the last month or so.

  12. Re:Yellowstone! by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Funny

    If that have gone off, ashy rain would be the least of our problems.

    "Look, Ma, it's raining pieces of Chicago!"

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  13. Ground Zero by Guy+From+V · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Ground Zero by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      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.

      The manual specifically states your not supposed to sleep with the tin foil hat. This is what happens. Now you are all contaminated.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Ground Zero by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Metallic/garlic taste would tend to indicate some sort of Sulphur/Selenium compounds in whatever you were tasting. I could see that coming from volcanic ash.

      --
      That is all.
  14. "Pineapple Express" (i.e. from Hawaii) by jdagius · · Score: 2

    http://news.yahoo.com/pineappl...
    Are there volcanoes in Hawaii? (And, do bears sleep in the woods?)

  15. Pollution by magarity · · Score: 1

    It's probably industrial pollution from China

  16. Industrial Tectonics by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 1

    Geo-engineering

    Back in the '60s and '70s a friend and I would occasionally take a back road from Ann Arbor to the "Dexter-Chelsea Industrial Complex" (a Vietnam War in-joke). We'd pass a small commercial site (always deserted on weekends) labeled "Industrial Tectonics".

    She made up a nice rant about how they're been hired by the "Committee to Reunite Gonwanaland" to adjust continental drift to re-merge the continents into a single supercontinent.

    (Later I found that "industrial tectonics" was about making fancy ball-shaped things of metal, ceramic, etc. for things like bearings, valves, and shot-peening (surface treating metals to create desired effects by tumbling them in an industrial-scale "cement mixer" with a bunch of ball bearings or other small, hard, objects.) Spheres, yes. Continental drift engineering, no. B-( Though I suppose you COULD speed up continental drift by injecting enough fancy ball bearings into faults, ala fracking.)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way