More from Mt. St. Helens

Since Sarah was in class tonight I could practice my commercial-time channel flipping*. The regular national news that airs on most channels just before 6:30pm was preempted by news of our local darling of the volcano world. Mt. St. Helens had an emissions/eruption that spewed ash and steam up to about 40,000' and certainly go the local news channels buzzing.

Since it became visibly active again last October 1 a new dome has been building inside the crater and since reached a height of over 900'. It's a strange looking, fin-like extrusion feature the geologists are calling the "whaleback" (more recent St. Helens photos and watch the mountain live on the VolcanoCam) and, from the looks of it, is really unstable. Mother Nature, after all, doesn't like geologic things with sharp edges or that stick out too far. It invariably tries to smooth those kinds of things out. The plume tonight, in my professional, er, geosciences major, opinion was some sort of collapse of the "whaleback" because the seismic signature that accompanied it wasn't substantial enough to kick up that much material from beneath as if it were a true eruption of new material. There were also no reports of increased gas emission level on flights over the volcano. Area news helicopters did capture some twilight shots of glowing fissures inside the volcano showing magma near if not reaching the surface.

Pretty cool stuff, though! My dad said he was driving home on I-5 and saw the largest puff rise from the crater rim up. Mom said she didn't see anything but gave dad credit since he didn't witness the 1980 eruption while she did. Too bad we weren't up at the Hideaway -- that would be a sweet view!

Comments (5) | To Top

3/11/2005 @ 6:12am

Repent! the rapture is nigh! seriously guys, don't get all blown up and shit.

by Alaric

3/11/2005 @ 6:37am

Hey, they said that no car-size boulders were throw out onto the crater rim so they could totally re-open it to hikers. THAT'd be a heck of a view!

by KevinFreitas

3/15/2005 @ 6:40pm

zzzzz.... *snork* huh, wha? did someone say somethin? ...no? hmmm, musta been the dogs barkin... zzzzzzzzzz.........

Fortunately for me, on a clear day I have a view of Mt St Helens from the Ross Island Bridge, about a mile from my house. :)

by Aaron

3/16/2005 @ 6:51am

Did you get to see St. Helens in action? Man, I would've loved to see this from the Hideaway! Need to get some DSL up there and a webcam. Yeah, that'd be sweet -- wouldn't hurt for our not-so-frequent network/bachelor parties up there, too. Get on that, will ya?

by KevinFreitas

4/16/2005 @ 6:57am

Why are recent updates on Mt.St.Helens so hard to find? The USGS site shows that the seismo's for Rainer and Hood are both looking quite interesting, certainly not at background levels as they report elsewhere. I had a dream about 5 years ago of 3 volcanoes within close proximity to each other erupting. I am quite sure my dream was of Helens, Hood and Rainier. I feel information is being kept out of the media and that hot magma is right under most peoples feet in the west. I used to live in Calgary and moved here to Quebec because it was getting too hot and dry in Calgary. With all of todays technology don't you find it amazing that they (USGS) are not giving us (the people) all of the pertinent information. How about a nice clean crisp satellite photo?

by Louise