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Birdy
Socialist
Joined: 20 Sep 2004
Posts: 13502
Location: Here.
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 Sat Dec 31, 2005 7:08 am Mount St. Helens releasing lava at astonishing pace |
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| Quote: | Mount St. Helens releasing lava at astonishing pace
Friday, December 30, 2005; Posted: 8:43 p.m. EST (01:43 GMT)
SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- Roughly every three seconds, the equivalent of a large dump truck load of lava -- 10 cubic yards -- oozes into the crater of Mount St. Helens, and with the molten rock comes a steady drumfire of small earthquakes.
The unremitting pace, going on for 15 months now, is uncommon, said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dave Sherrod. Experts say it is unclear what the activity signifies or how much longer it will continue.
"One view of this eruption is that we're at the end of the eruption that began in 1980," Sherrod said. "If it hadn't been so cataclysmic ... it might instead have gone through 30 or 40 years of domebuilding and small explosions."
St. Helens' violent May 18, 1980, eruption blasted 3.7 billion cubic yards of ash and debris off the top of the mountain. Fifty-seven people died in the blast, which left a gaping crater in place of the perfect, snowclad cone that had marked the original 9,677-foot peak known as "America's Mount Fuji."
St. Helens -- now 8,325 feet -- rumbled for another six years, extruding 97 million cubic yards of lava onto the crater floor in a series of 22 eruptions that built a 876-foot dome.
The volcano, about 100 miles south of Seattle, fell silent in 1986.
Then, in September 2004, the low-level quakes began -- occasionally spiking above magnitude 3. Since then, the mountain has squeezed out about 102 million cubic yards of lava, more in 15 months than in the six years after the eruption.
Sherrod describes the movement of lava up through the volcano as being "like a sticky piston trying to rise in a rusty cylinder. These quakes are very small -- we think they're associated with that sticking and slipping as the ground is deformed and relaxes."
The dome collapses and grows and collapses and grows, he said. "It changes its location ... it can't seem to maintain its height at much more than it is now " -- about 1,300 feet. "Then it kind of shoves the sandpile aside and starts over."
It's not entirely clear where the lava is coming from. If it were being generated by the mountain, scientists would expect to see changes in the mountain's shape, its sides compressing as lava is spewed out.
At the current rate, "three or four months would have been enough time to exhaust what was standing in the conduit. ... The volume is greater than anything that could be standing in a narrow 3-mile pipe," Sherrod said.
That suggests resupply from greater depths, which normally would generate certain gases and deep earthquakes. Neither is being detected.
"That's one of the headscratchers, I guess," Sherrod said.
All the recent activity has remained within the crater, though scientists -- keenly aware of the potential damage that silica-laced ash can pose to jet engines -- monitor St. Helens closely for plumes of smoke and ash. Some have gone as high as 30,000 feet.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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I think volcanos are veeeery intersting. When I was little, I always wanted to be some kind of scientist with it. 
Btw, does anyone live near this volcano? Well, not near, but, you know, somewhere where you can see it or something. 
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Brightstar82
Rear Admiral
Joined: 08 Apr 2005
Posts: 4394
Location: A Borg Cube....Where Else?
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| Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:23 am |
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Its interesting but I also find it very scary at the same time.
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Birdy
Socialist
Joined: 20 Sep 2004
Posts: 13502
Location: Here.
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| Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:55 am |
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Yeah, of course it is! It is very scary. But you know what I've learned about volcanos; it's much more scary if a volcano that was inactive so long that people forgot about it, starts to erupt. People build their houses near it and stuff, because they think it's unlikely that it'll erupt.
If you have an active volcano, you at least know it's going to erupt sometime soon.
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Nosce te ipsum
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Starbuck
faster...
Joined: 19 Feb 2003
Posts: 8715
Location: between chaos and melody
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| Sat Dec 31, 2005 10:43 am |
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This is really interesting, if I can't do something with cars I want to be a member of the USGS. My friend lives in Seatle, he said its really scarry because you'll get these really small earthquakes very frequently and you don't know whats happening.
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Cathexis
The Angel of Avalon
Joined: 26 Dec 2001
Posts: 5901
Location: ~~ Where Dreams Have No End�
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| Sat Dec 31, 2005 5:05 pm |
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Wow....fascinating!
I can see what's scary about this....considering that Mt. St. Helen is active....the prospects of what might happen in the near future are quite frightening, to say the least.
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Jeff Miller
Fleet Admiral
Joined: 22 Nov 2001
Posts: 23947
Location: Mental Ward for the Mentaly Unstable 6th floor, Saint John's 1615 Delaware Longview Washington 98632
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| Sun Jan 01, 2006 12:37 am |
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I live less than 30 minutes from it. Everytime it blows I see it from my front door.
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TrekkieMage
Office Junkie
Joined: 17 Oct 2004
Posts: 5335
Location: Hiding
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| Sun Jan 01, 2006 1:05 am |
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Wow. And what's even stranger is that I've hear that it's gonna blow soon (for a volcano), but didn't hear that there was actually lava coming out. Facinating!
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Jeff Miller
Fleet Admiral
Joined: 22 Nov 2001
Posts: 23947
Location: Mental Ward for the Mentaly Unstable 6th floor, Saint John's 1615 Delaware Longview Washington 98632
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| Sun Jan 01, 2006 1:16 am |
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I figure if it really goes off full steam I'll be dead before I see it comming. So if I die than I die.
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