Mt. St. Helens about to erupt?

[Amy]

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- A strengthening series of earthquakes at Mount St. Helens prompted seismologists Sunday to warn that the once-devastating volcano may see a small explosion soon.

Kind of a scary thought...


full story

[Illuminati]

Very interesting... I wonder what a typical "small eruption" is ... it should not even compare to when she blew her top in the late 70's.. (1979, methinks?)

[Apoptosis]

scratches another spot off the vacation list.

[T-Shirt]

Last week they said "lots of small quakes, just water getting into the hot Lava dome" (this happens every year when we get enough rain) than saturday night "a few deeper quakes" now harmonic tremors (sign of some sort of eruption, gas, steam, or dome bulding(lava))
Doesn't sound to big ........yet, but they did cancel all camping and hiking permits all the way down the toutle river valley to the columbia.

I was hiking on the mountain a few weeks before the may 18 1980 eruption, and still remember watching the ash plume for my house in seattle (90 miles away) that morning
A small 'burp' can throw ash 20,000 feet, or throw house size boulders around the crater.
http://www.ess.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN ... Hgasex.htm
and the webcam (daylight only)
http://www.ess.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN ... Hgasex.htmhttp://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/

Unfortunately pictures don't show how impressive this place is, well worth a couple vacation days if you're in the neighborhood

[T-Shirt]

this mornings report says
"no high levels of CO2 or sulfer dioxide, so magma is probably not moving .......yet"
but they are excited enough to be fixing/adding more monitoring equipment (GPS, seismographic sensors, gas monitors( these are expensive and have a short life one the mountain) etc.) so they expect something soon.
even a steam expolsion could cause a big mudflow as there are 2 glaciers and some snow inside the crater now.
red zone is now 5 miles

[T-Shirt]

For those that care
ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/wr/wa/vancouver/MSH_Images/
FTP directory of images from the volcanno
BIG, not 56k friendly, but worth a few seconds of broadband

[Illuminati]

Very nice pics... nice to see the "before" picture.

[T-Shirt]

A little gas, a little ash
a small fart
and back to sleep

Videohttp://mfile.akamai.com/8405/wmv/vod.ib ... 9.200k.asx not for 56k

and a slide show

http://www.kirotv.com/slideshow/3777703 ... ;s=8;w=320

[Apoptosis]

thanks for the links! Great images and movie clips. I figured it would just be a small "vent" of gas and not much more. It's gotta build back up before it can blow up again... hehe

[T-Shirt]

This was a relitively small event (ash cloud ONLY reached 10,000 feet ) and a light dusting reach part of portland (this stuff is like industrial strength comet, perfect for "resurfacing" your cars paint and pistons (if it gets in))
and you're right there's more to come
"Seismicity dropped to a low level for several hours after the eruption, but is gradually increasing with earthquakes (maximum Magnitude about 3) occurring a rate of 1-2 per minute. We infer that the system is repressurizing. As a result, additional steam-and-ash eruptions similar to today’s could occur at any time.

Field crews in a helicopter took thermal images of the dome and crater both during and several hours after the eruption. Results will be available tomorrow. Another crew began deployment of two broadband seismometers that will provide useful data for in-depth scientific studies. Today’s explosion disabled both the seismometer and GPS instrument on the lava dome.