Kerry says (altogether, now!) "This is Bush's fault!"
Posted on 10/26/2004 7:41:26 PM PDT by Revel
10/26/2004, 3:37 a.m. PT The Associated Press
KALAMA, Wash. (AP) — Along the Kalama River, locals say they know something the volcanologists don't, that when the water turns milky white it means Mount St. Helens may be about to blow.
Elwin Bottorff, 76, a retired lumber mill manager, says he has been reading the river that runs past his front yard for 40 years and knew what it meant the last time he saw the change.
"The first thing I said was, 'That goddamn mountain is screwing around again,'" Bottorff said. "Then, sure enough, about a week later, here it comes."
That was just about the time it took before seismograph needles started jumping and days before geologists and volcanologists warned of an impending eruption.
Fly fishers were casting lines to riffles, hoping to land a steelhead or coho salmon, as the river ran low and clear on that cloudless morning in mid-September, Bottorff and his neighbors recalled.
"So clear, you could read a newspaper through the water," says Barbara Orzel, whose famly runs Prichard's Western Angler, a bait and tackle outfitter, snack shop and community hub.
"Just a gorgeous day," Orzel says. "Then, pretty soon, here it comes, so eerie it was almost like you were on another planet."
All of a sudden the Kalama was running chalk white, "one hundred percent white," Bottorff said.
"Just like milk," added another resident, Bill Swihart.
It took a full 24 hours before the river ran clear again, locals said.
"There was no question in my mind or the neighbors' either," Bottorff said. "We all knew. I mean, my God, in 24 years it hasn't done it."
He said the last time he saw the river turn that color was in 1980, just before the volcano blew its top on May 18, killing 57 people, blasting away miles of forest and banketing homes, cabins and cars with gritty, machine-clogging volcanic ash.
Although the Kalama originates from a spring above McBride Lake on the southwest flank of St. Helens, scientists who monitor the volcano are skeptical of the theory.
"I can't think of any mechanism related to volcanic activity that would change that river's color," said Jon Major, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.
Molten rock rising within the mountain, as is now occurring at St. Helens, has been known to stir up minerals, raise temperatures and change the color of the water in hot springs much higher up the volcano, "but the Kalama's headwaters are probably too far away (from the magma) for that," Major said.
A more likely cause, Major suggested, was the collapse of a stream bank or a small landslide — especially since areas around the mountain received the most rainfall in 18 years during August.
"N-O," Bottorff insisted. "No. Impossible."
Orzel said sediment from heavy rain or slides usually turns the river "a brownish, cup of coffee with a lot of cream" color rather than milky white.
With what's happening now at St. Helens, "it's just too much of a coincidence," she added.
Another believer in the river is Gary Suhadolnik, a retired state fish and wildlife officer who worked in the area for most of his 35-year career, including a grim body-recovery mission after the big blast of 1980.
"I'm not belittling the scientists, because I'm sure they know their stuff," Suhadolnik said. "Maybe these guys look at us and say, 'What do these people know?' but I can tell you this:
"The Kalama never turned white except during volcanic activity."
Suhadolnik also said the source of the river, "the most beautiful little spring you ever saw, bubbling right out of the ground," is not far from ancient lava tubes.
"Logically, there has to be a connection," he said. "Least, that's my gut feeling."
•__
Information from: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, http://www.seattle-pi.com/
Kerry says (altogether, now!) "This is Bush's fault!"
It's all Bush's fault. The explosives are inside the crater.
OK, If 5000 fisherman in the river, feel the ground shake, all have diarrhea simultaneously, guess what color the river turns?
Something wicked this way cometh!
Have they ever tested the milky white water to see the mineral composition? Just asking...curious type here.
And Kerry called St. Hellen's a lesbian.
LMAO!!!
you beat me to it
Well, obviously if he can't think of one, it cannot exist.
"Just like milk," added another resident, Bill Swihart.
Milky Way ping.
Bookmarking for future reference.
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"Have they ever tested the milky white water to see the mineral composition? Just asking...curious type here."
Good question. I don't know the answer.
"blasting away miles of forest and blanketing homes, cabins and cars with gritty, machine-clogging volcanic ash."
And over the span of a few days, creating a striated scene that had the appearance of being "millions of years old."
Really brilliant, those atheists and evolutionists...
Is that pic Tillamook Rock Light?
The best quote from the first eruption was from a geologist. He said the first eruption cause 10,000 years of geologic change. Us "short earthers" just smiled.
A liquified high temperature carbonate gas could do this, if it was released near the surface along many tiny fissures. But the area isn't known for that type (Carbonatite) of rock. The geologist didn't say it couldn't happen, just that he couldn't think of a mechanism for it.
Gases were my first thought for a white color.
Have you been washing your socks in the Kalama River?
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