Posted on 09/30/2004 12:02:30 AM PDT by datura
Note to Admin Moderator: I'm posting this in "Breaking News" since no one has said a word about it as of yet. If you don't feel it should stay in Breaking, please leave on Front Page or FR. Thanks.
While checking the seismographs tonight for the region, it is becoming apparent that Mt. Rainier is also awakening along with Mt St Helens. At first, I had hoped that the seismographs at Mt Rainier were merely picking up the earth movement from St Helens, but the tremors do not correlate.
By checking the charts for St Helens back on the 25th of the month - when the current event began - the buildup is easily seen. There are occasional quakes that are of noticeable strength, while the others are extremely small. Moving forward from the 25th, you can see the intensity grow, as well as the frequency shorten. Well, the same scenario is playing itself out right now under Mt Rainier, especially the Longmire station.
Posted below are the charts showing this growth at St Helens, along with the more current ones from Mt Rainier. If Mt Rainier's activity increases in a manner similar to Mt St Helens, this will be an interesting time indeed for all of this region......
Here is Mt St Helens from the 25th:
And here is St Helens again, from the morning of the 26th:
This is Mt St Helens right now. Constant earth movement......
Alert status for Mt St Helens is now at "3". Now for Mt Rainier. Here's the chart for Rainier from yesterday morning/afternoon:
And this is the current chart for Mt Rainier:
As you can see, the earth is starting to move under this volcano as well. The duration of the quakes under Mt Rainier is longer, and the frequency is longer than at Mt St Helens, but there is obviously something going on here as well. I really want this one to go back to sleep.
W/r/t Mt. Rainier... When I last read about this mountain, I thought that the biggest risk to people was from melting of the snowpack, and the flooding downstream that would follow.
Bump
From KGW-TV in Portland OR
http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_100104_news_helens_friday.2a41c079.html
John Major, a geologist with the USGS Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., said a deformation pattern in the crater not far from the crack demonstrates that, "something is pushing up from below onto that glacier.” He said the ground has uplifted as much as "a few tens of feet," but couldn't provide an exact measurement since crews were assessing the area from the air.
It's not safe to use ground crews, Major said.
"We don’t have highly gas-charged magma trying to move up, but we do have something in the way," Major said during a news conference Friday morning.
"Not safe to use ground crews." An eruption must be imminent.
If it erupted, that would be a major problem, as it was with St. Helens (and also, notably, Nevado Ruiz in Colombia, which generated a mudflow with glacier melt that buried the city of Armero, entombing about 25,000 people).
But the major concern with Rainier right now is what can happen due to a large landslide on the mountain, which could also generate a big mudflow with virtually no warning; certainly none of the warnings that would precede an eruption. In an earlier post on this thread I noted that the volcanic edifice of Rainier is unstable due to ongoing corrosion of the rocks by volcanic gases.
wow, this is cool.
CNN field reporter: "We know the earth is a live organism." LOL Yea right. The earth is a rock with dirt and living things ON it. (doh!)
Mt. St. Helen Cam:
http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/
All the talk about it being a sign from God will prove true, if in fact several erupt closely together. Prayer is a good for the soul activity, that I strongly recommend.
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