Mount St Helens...

[Turtle]

The weather cleared enough today to allow helicopters in for a survey of the crater after yesterday's 3.1 quake. Hot ejected ash & rock has landed on the glaciers & is producing the first notable glacier melting since the eruption started last October.

The first link is the USGS Official update for today, & the second is the Portland TV station KGW website. Registration is required to see their video, but the piece I noted that is on their front page is 5 minutes of raw helicopter video from inside the crater TODAY.:eek: Very worthwhile.

 

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Cascades/CurrentActivity/current_updates.html

 

http://www.kgw.com/

Front page article>>Sky 8: New dome building at Mount St. Helens

 

:D

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[InfiniteNow]

Have you seen today's APOD? Not St. Helen's, but wholey guacamole! :)

 

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060607.html

[Turtle]

Cloudy weather has the mountain obscured & quakes have increased over the last several days. We had a 3.2 on the mountain last night & I heard some reports of an ash/steam plume rising above 10,000 feet. I haven't verified the plume report, but here is the quake report from USGS:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/uw06100404.php

In any case, a 3.2 is sufficient to knock down parts of the growing fin. The viscous lava fin continues to grow around 6 feet in altitude per day.

 

I discoverd that if I climb out onto my roof & up to the peak of the garage I can see Mt. St. Helens!

[Turtle]

I have managed to 'borrow' my housemate's security camera setup & I now have full time B/W video & audio monitoring capability of both Mt. St. Helens & Mt. Hood. One camera is a little blurry, having spent time in the open weather; I have it trained on Hood.

I have no capability to transfer these images to the net, however I plan to use the system to alert me to plumes & then go out on the roof with my color video cam.

I can tape to VCR tape if called for, and the cameras also have IR.

Something about the system I didn't know before is that is battery operable; a potential cryptozoological monitor?

This concludes my irregularly scheduled report.B)

[Janus]

Here we go thens. Looking NNE to St. Helens

Looking ESE to Mt. Hood.:Waldo:

 

Hmm, NNE to St. Helens and ESE to Hood... By jove, that makes us neighbors!

 

So Turtle, where were you 26 years ago during the big blow-up?

[Turtle]

Hmm, NNE to St. Helens and ESE to Hood... By jove, that makes us neighbors!

 

So Turtle, where were you 26 years ago during the big blow-up?

 

:cup: Sorry for such a long delay in responding Janus; I was here for big blow-up. Later that year (1980) I gathered pumice from islands in the Columbia & sold it to tourist shops. I kept nothing smaller than a baseball & could fill 2 gunny sacks in time to beat the tide.

 

:) Current conditions have the mountain continuing to erupt lava from its crater at a more-or-less steady rate. We have a heat wave on us so the weather is clear, but I've heard no new news reports or seen any chopper footage from fly-ins to the crater. Checking the VolcanoCam however, it does appear the lava fin may have partialy collapsed. Looks slumped off to the West (right) to me.

 

:) More irregularly scheduled reports to follow as new information is made available. Have a good day.

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

[Turtle]

We registered the largest quake on the mountain in several months; a 3.3 Friday evening.

◊ Link to Quake data: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/45.47.-123.-121.php

 

◊Link to seismogram trace of event from my nearest station (40 miles): http://www.pnsn.org/WEBICORDER/VOLC/CDF_SHZ_UW.2006070100.html

 

:)

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[Janus]

:) Sorry for such a long delay in responding Janus; I was here for big blow-up. Later that year (1980) I gathered pumice from islands in the Columbia & sold it to tourist shops. I kept nothing smaller than a baseball & could fill 2 gunny sacks in time to beat the tide.

 

I was around too, though at the time I lived about 40 miles further North.

 

I got my own unique souvenir of the eruption - ten stitches on the top of my noggin. After the eruption we had to clean the ash off of of our flat roofed building at work. Five gallon plastic buckets were filled witht he ash and lowered on a rope to those of us waiting below who hauled it off in wheel barrels. I was standing at the bottom waitng for my first bucket, when, while it was still about 20 ft above me, the rope can undone. I tried to get out of the way, but it still nailed me in the head.

[Bammer]

I stand corrected, Racoon. ;) Of course, you've mentioned before that you also live close to Mt. St. Helens. That's so cool!

 

I wonder if Mt. St. Helens will erupt in my lifetime. I also wonder if another famous volcano, Vesuvius, will pop its top in my lifetime. :hihi:

 

 

The real kicker will be Yellowstone. I watched a docu recently on Nat Geo which warned that if Yellowstone has a major eruption being the mega volcano that it is it could well be the end of the planet. And Yellowstone is rising annually. Scientists don't conjecture so much if it will erupt as they do when and how big the eruption will be.

[Turtle]

Business as usual for an ongoing dome-building erruption. Inspite of that, it is now possible to hike to the the crater rim. :lol: The Forest Service has opened the trail for guided hikes under a first-come-first-served permitting system. Here is the link to the specifics:

Mount St. Helens Climbing To Resume On July 21, 2006

Updated: 13 July 2006 -- Forest Service and Mount St. Helens Institute officials announce the opening of the new climbing reservation system and the reopening of the volcano to climbing.

 

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/recreation/mount-st-helens/

[InfiniteNow]

I heard on the radio this morning that hikers should be certain to bring safety glasses, a hard hat, and masks when they go on these treks. Never mind the lava that's flowing. :lol:

 

Remember kids, safety first! :hyper:

[Turtle]

I heard on the radio this morning that hikers should be certain to bring safety glasses, a hard hat, and masks when they go on these treks. Never mind the lava that's flowing. :doh:

 

Remember kids, safety first! :doh:

The lava continues to flow, but it is a slow moving extremely viscous lava. Hard hat, dusk mask, glasses, .:hihi:

[InfiniteNow]

I spied a giant insect attacking the new dome! Hard hat, dusk mask, glasses, DDT.:confused:

Lol... what a wonderful shot! :P

[Turtle]

The current eruption of St Helens has continued unabated for 2 years now, and I seem to recall a year ago the geologists saying that at the current rate of growth the dome would reach the crater's rim in 10 years. Seems they underestimated a bit, as last week the dome came within just a few yards of that measure before experiencing a partial collapse.

Here's a new news story out of Seattle, as well as this morning's live view of the steadily steaming summit.

 

Measurements in August show the lava dome was 3,313 feet long, 1,673 feet wide and just 4 feet below the rim of the crater, which is 7,776.

http://www.kirotv.com/mountsthelens/9965809/detail.html

 

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

:) :)

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[Turtle]

We had a 3.5 quake under the volcano today, but visibility has limited assessment as to any associated rock-falls or break-up of the dome.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/uw10212213.php

 

While I don't know if it's related to the quake, the volcano cam situated 10 miles from the mountain has been down as well today. :phones:

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

[Turtle]

We had a 3.5 quake under the volcano today, but visibility has limited assessment as to any associated rock-falls or break-up of the dome.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/uw10212213.php

 

My bad...the event created an ash cloud which was photographed and the dome partially collapsed.

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_102106_news_st_helens_dome.5f862882.html

Oooopppssss...:phones:

[Turtle]

Nice view of the snow-mantled volcano today.

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

We had a 3.4 quake yesterday afternoon under the mountain:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/uw12020010.php

 

Loowit (Native American name for St. Helens) has been continuously errupting for over a year now. :D