Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:04 am

Works great during the day and has a crisp clean image!

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/

If you want to watch her explode then this is a must!

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:08 am

hehe who knows when she will go though. remember volcanos work in geologic time not human time.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:16 am

More harmonic tremors last night after a small steam burst (11 pm PDT)
much increased co2 levels
and even though the gps sensors (mounted to hard rock) show very little deformation, analsys of crater photos shows the glacier has risen "10's of feet"
I think it's going now, just not on the surface
now that the wind (what little there is) has shifted to the east (not over my house) I'm ready to watch it go

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 3:31 pm

Round 2:

The clouds began to rise shortly before 10 a.m. (1 p.m. ET). Pilots in the area reported the plumes rising to about 10,000 feet above sea level or about 1,600 feet above the peak.

"This does count as an eruption; it's just a very small one at this point," said Bonnie Lippitt of the U.S. Forest Service.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:56 pm

actually this is #4, and they're right this is just a steam burst (burp or clearing the throat)
Only this time the earthquakes and harmonic tremors continued during and after the 'event'.
whatever is coming, it's getting close.
this one was funny because we were watching the USGS morning press conference and this started to go as the New (bie) spokesman was talking about how not much had changed, and the reporters were watching the monitor behind him. it got biger and bigger a finally some one yelled "somethings happening now", and the guy was "huh? no. it's ahh (WTF? look)"
It was a lot of steam and some old ash, and He was a little lost.

Post by **Illuminati** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 6:00 pm

Just an update that MSH (Mount St. Helens) is still talking to us... with the swelling of the lavadome by about 150 ft...

And today's steam and ash eruption was the biggest one yet... and this time it emitted from multiple vents in the crater... so everything is getting more and more broken up in the volcanic center for the big show!

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:11 am

Caught the morning press conference guy off gaurd again! (still setting up) And of course the volcanologists would rather be watching the event, than stading with their backs to it answering questions (some really stupid) for reporters(some really, really, stupid. (can't these people read a little background info, before they show up?))
http://www.king5.com/perl/common/video/ ... erials.wmv
(video from helicopter during the eruption, big not for 56k, ignore the add at the begining)

This one sent a light dusting (1/8") of ash 25-30miles (mostly very unpopulated areas and hop farms) which plays hell on the highways (big dust clouds after every car truck) looks cool but these people will be needing new windshields and paint before long. The steam plume did stretch out about 50 miles and was very visable on satellite.

And then the earthquakes STOPPED!
They say it is likely plugged and re-pressurizing now, so the next one could be BIG.
Unfortunatly low clouds a rain rolled in overnight so we may not be able to see much for a few days

June 6 7 am PST
Current status is Volcano Alert (Alert Level 3); aviation color code RED

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:33 am

Alert level has been dropped to Level 2 (a life- or property-threatening event is NOT imminent)
This doesn't lower the possiblity of further/larger events (now at 80%) it just is unlikely in today. (could change in hours or even minutes)
Sesmic activty continues at a reduced level, and the 5 mile red zone remains in effect.
Interesting human events/reactions story from KOMO-TV in Seattle
http://komotv.com/stories/33376.htm

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 11:38 am

That video clip is pretty cool... They need to be like hurricane pilots and fly over the volcano. Those guys were like 5 miles away!

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 12:06 pm

i dont know about that huricanse over water dont spit flaming rocks and ash.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:14 am

Apoptosis wrote:That video clip is pretty cool... They need to be like hurricane pilots and fly over the volcano. Those guys were like 5 miles away!

yeah the FAA is kinda strict about closed airspace. They can do some amazing, very stable closeups with their turret mounted cameras, but the big pictuce give you a better sense of the scale of this thing.
of course this is still tiny compared to 1980

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 9:16 am

infinitevalence wrote:i dont know about that huricanse over water dont spit flaming rocks and ash.

but volcanos don't move around much (if they did Mt St Helens would be in florida by now

)

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Fri Oct 08, 2004 12:18 pm

This mornings news conference says they now believe a second model of eruption,
rather then magma pushing a wedge of rock up from 3-8 kilometers down (causing the new 350 foot high bulge on the back (south side) of the lava dome. they now believe that the magma is 500 meters or less beneath the bulge forming a big "blister" (or zit) and it may pop on the next push
still waiting for yesterday gas a thermal imaging tests to comeback to confirm this new idea.
also today's rain (1 inch or more expected) will likely cause more lahars ( indonisian word meaning mud/debris flow from volcano)
A lahar ishttp://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/Effec ... Lahar.html <<<<good pictures here) like thick concrete (sometime hot) moving at 60-100mph, current assesments put the largest likely flow volume at 15-30 MILLION cubic yards (they get bigger as they pick up rock. trees and mud along the way) should an eruption melt the glaicers and current snow all at once. this should be handled by the SRS (184 foot high dam/settling area built after 1980 to slow down lahars)
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/News/MSH2004/ ... ct2004.pdf However this is a high snowfall area with totals of 700-1200 inches of snowfall (up to 50 feet of snow water equvilent (depth of water content if melted in place) by
april so if a big eruption waits until spring, the lahar could exceed 85 million cubic yards! this would top the dam at the dam at the SRS by 3-6 feet causing the equvilant of 100 year flood downstream (takes about 8.5 hours from the crater to the columbia river)

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:36 pm

I guess there were a couple small steam burps today, earthquake level is very low now.
going to be sunny all week so I'm ready to watch the big one

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Sun Oct 10, 2004 6:38 pm

Its gona be crazy when/if it goes. not nearly as big as the last one but still more than interesting. just hope people are safe and smart and stay away from the blast zone.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 3:04 am

No, they already caught one dumbass who climbed up the back side the night of Oct 2 to videotape the sunrise.
interesting, but very shakey (due to constant 3.0+ earthquakes) pictures.
But this is the kind of idiot who will gethurt and get on his cell phone and scream for someone to come rescue him.
rather than fining and jailing him (federal property=federal crime) they ought to just drop him in the crater ("you want close-ups? here's your friggin' closeup!)
about a dozen others have been caught somewhere inside the red zone, usually before they got very far in.
There still is a possiblity of a blast of the same magnitude as 1980, but it will be different (no big landslide, some lahars, but mostly straight up ash cloud)
not alot of risk for most people, in 1980 nobody really knew what could happen, and none of the warning systems were in place.
The lava dome/bulge continues to grow around 2.6 million cubic yards a day (think of 220,000 dump truck loads a day

), but earthquakes are at a very low level (could be a resting phase, or magma moving up with no resistance) the think sundays steam bursts were big chunks of the now very hot lava dome falling off onto the glaicer, and any ash was just stirred up from the surface.

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:39 am

look at the high tech equipment, here's a mach 1 ash sampling device

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:47 am

Thats much better use of our tax dollars than $5000 aluminum trashcans for collecting ash. I say way to go USGS, keep using your brains like that and i will write my congressperson and request more money for you.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Mon Oct 11, 2004 11:59 am

man that is great. The duct tape is the key!

T-Shirt · Post by **T-Shirt** » Tue Oct 12, 2004 3:35 am

They could make a fortune just charging the press camping fees

Everyone else has to leave this parking lot at sunset, so the best spots have been takenover by "dish city"