Posted on 10/07/2004 12:59:00 PM PDT by Mr. Mojo
Mount St. Helens' daily throes have muscled TV's disaster watch away from Florida's hurricanes and gotten the nation wondering if another monster eruption like the killer of 1980 is in store.
Scientists wonder, too. But they're also keeping an eye on 13 other major active volcanoes in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, aware that Mount St. Helens isn't even the most fearsome rock on the block.
That distinction goes to Mount Rainier, a 14,410-foot giant towering from 80 miles away over Seattle and its 3 million metro area residents.
A year-round playground for hikers and skiers, Rainier hasn't blown big-time in 500 years - hardly a blink of an eye in geologic time. But if it did with the intensity of 1980's St. Helens blast, which killed 57, catastrophe could result.
"The Cascades is an environment where explosive volcanoes are the norm," said Jeff Wynn, the U.S. Geological Survey's chief volcano hazards scientist.
"And we all agree that Rainier is the most dangerous - not because it's restive now but because of the exposure to people," he said.
On Wednesday, the Geological Survey said the danger of a strong Mount St. Helens eruption had passed and downgraded its alert level from 3, the highest, to 2.
"We no longer think an eruption is imminent in the sense of minutes or hours," geologist Willie Scott said.
But the volcano, which awoke Sept. 23 and erupted - if weakly - for the first time in 18 years Friday, was far from back to sleep and could keep venting steam and ash for several weeks, scientists said.
And Rainier is never far from their thoughts. More ice and snow cover its big dome than all the other Cascades volcanoes combined. So a big eruption would trigger gigantic debris flows - "more like a wall of wet concrete that nothing can stop," Wynn said - plus enormous snow and ice surges all the way to Puget Sound.
"The more ice, the more danger," he said. "Water really lubricates the flow and makes the distance it can cover far greater."
Alarms at Rainier
Residents of nearby towns would have less than an hour to get to high ground and watch their homes be swept away. Greater Seattle wouldn't be spared. Geologists have discovered, for instance, that Tacoma's port sits on a debris flow from the eruption five centuries ago.
That one blew off the east side of the mountaintop, the side pointing away from Seattle, but still spilled around the other side and into what are now densely populated areas.
What scares scientists today is the threat of a big one that blows off Rainier's west side. It's why the government has spent millions of dollars in recent years installing alarms around the volcano.
Mount Hood near Portland, Ore., hovers over 2 million people.
It hasn't blown since just before Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805, but recently swarms of small earthquakes have rumbled inside the 11,239-foot peak. A major eruption from Hood could threaten Portland's water supply if sediment flows reached the Sandy River, Wynn said.
The 1,000-mile-long Cascade chain is part of a vast loop of volcanoes, called the "Ring of Fire," that runs along the Pacific rim, from New Zealand up to Japan, along Alaska's Aleutian Islands and down the Pacific coast of Central and South America.
Three-fourths of the world's 600 active volcanoes sit on the ring.
The USA has 50 active volcanoes. St. Helens is the Cascades' most active member because of its location astride two of the gigantic plates that make up the Earth's crust, plates that constantly slide and bang into each other.
A vent for heat
Think of volcanoes as Earth's heat outlets. Volcanoes tend to erupt where one plate slides under another. Gas-rich molten rock called magma has a way to escape the earth's core.
Mount St. Helens is more active than other volcanoes because it lies along an especially weak area of crust.
But eruptions seen over a lifetime lack context. Mount St. Helens' 1980 calamity was "fairly small change in its own history," Wynn said. Three eruptions in the 14th century were all much larger.
An ancient eruption in what's now Yellowstone National Park - a "super volcano" - deposited several hundred feet of ash as far away as Colorado Springs.
Other Cascades volcanoes, such as 14,161-foot Mount Shasta in northern California, are considered low risks to erupt. Geologists believe Shasta, the chain's second-highest peak, blows about once every 600 years.
But don't expect the tumult inside Mount St. Helens to set off other volcanoes in the Cascades.
"They're independent systems," Wynn said.
Kind of a nothing story, ain't it?
Oh goody.. After 1000 Hurricanes hitting us, let's scare the living hell out of everybody with dormant volcanos.
Yeah, I should of at least written "caption this" under the photo. ......or perhaps linked to some poll and encouraged folks to Freep it.
See the below link on Yellowstone - super volcano.
http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/supervol.htm
It is believed to be the largest volcano (extant?) on earth.
The rim of the park is the rim of the volanco. Immense!
Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood. Big deal. You want to see a real explosion, go see video of the eruption of Mt. Dean.
Thank for the interesting story - a lot of people have been wondering about Ranier, it's just nice to have a little perspective on the whole situation!
"And we all agree that Rainier is the most dangerous - not because it's restive now but because of the exposure to people,"
The beer or the mountain?
Unless you live in Tacoma.
"Residents of nearby towns would have less than an hour to get to high ground and watch their homes be swept away. Greater Seattle wouldn't be spared. Geologists have discovered, for instance, that Tacoma's port sits on a debris flow from the eruption five centuries ago."
Running out of thing to blame on Bush???
Sure, it's nothing...unless you live in rainier's shadow.
Like me.
If Rainier blows, i have 20-25 minutes to get to high ground. After that, everything I0 didn't take with me will be buried in 60 feet of mud.
Nice to think about, no?
The thing to remember about St. Helens was that there wasn't that much time between when it started acting up and when it blew - just a few months, wasn't it? So Rainier - which hasn't blown in 500 years, and is getting to the "past due" stage - could also become active without warning.
Mt. Ranier lost its top some 10,000 years ago; the geologists have tracked the debris all the way to where it went into the Sound. I think Ranier is well ahead of St. Helens, and it quit making scary faces and yelling "boo" about 9,500 years ago. Although, if I recall correctly, when Cook(?I think?) "discovered" and named it, Ranier was smoking. Anyway, what if Ranier does wake up and takes out Seattle; we'd have a Republican State of Washington again, wouldn't we.
I blame Halliburton.
Yes, the mud flows would cause damage all the way to Seattle, so a Rainier eruption would have many times the impact as St. Helens, maybe not in fatalities (if we had ample warning), but surely in property damage.
It's not enough that we have to deal with a present issue of a live volcanoe, reporters have to imagine and build all kinds of scary scenarios that might happen in other areas...
I think I've seen old woodcuts that show Rainier smoking.
I believe you all are missing the point, the point being that Mount Hood and Mount Rainier reside near the very liberal, tolerant and pc communities of Seattle and Portland. Not much of a loss if they blow (hee-hee)
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