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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.

20 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.

  2. 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 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)

    2. 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
    3. 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.

    4. 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.

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

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

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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)

  6. 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.

  7. 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?

  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.

  9. 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...
  10. 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.

  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>
  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.

  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. 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.