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Science

VolcanoCam Back On The Air 26

Cyberherbalist writes "Over a year after the camera went on the fritz, the Mount Saint Helens VolcanoCam is finally back on the air. It's just in time to catch the famous firework as its earthquake level rises dramatically. All MSH climbing permits have been cancelled due to the danger of rocks and such flying from the lava dome inside the crater. If the weather holds, you may get some good views if the volcano continues ramping up its activity."
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VolcanoCam Back On The Air

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  • by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Monday September 27, 2004 @09:29PM (#10369218) Homepage Journal
    There's an eruption possible in the near future, but it won't be as big as the last, according to news I've read.

    Anyone living up in that area see anything with the naked eye that they want to report? I think if I lived up there, I'd leave town for a while for someplace safe and quiet. I hear Florida is nice this time of year.
    • Re:Possible eruption (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Unless you're sitting in the crater, you're probably someplace safe and quiet. The last eruption, to my knowledge, was a fairly small (as these things go) effusion of ash in 1990.

      Right now the likelihood of various things happening goes something along these lines:

      Likely -- nothing happens but the earthquake swarms diminish

      Less likely -- there's a steam explosion in the crater that blasts some rock to other parts of the crater.

      Rather Unlikely -- magma reaches the surface and some ash erupts or minor dom
    • I'm looking at it from near Portland, OR. I'm waiting for a big "Poof" and for all of our TV stations to be interrupted. The erruption will probably be steam and some more lava pouring onto the surface helping to rebuild the cone. It's happened a few times since 1980.

      The "fear factor" report on the news today was that the dam built to hold up rocks and trees was already overloaded after 8 years but was intented to last 50 years. They followed that up with all the fish hatcheries on the Columbia River
  • It's my right to get a Darwin award if I please.

    I damn well should be able to climb the mountain,
    and even wander around in the crater. There just
    needs to be a notice that no rescue operations
    will be provided. "Enter at own risk!" will do.
    • well... if you want to toy oppose naturs authority then you should have no problem going without permits and offending some mere humans.
    • It's my right to get a Darwin award if I please.


      Maybe so, but there are always negative externalities to events like that.

      What if you were a stupid parent of a kid who would have grown up to cure cancer, and you dragged him along with you on your stupid hike up the mountain?
      Just so you can't claim the kid has bad genes anyway, let's say the state was careless and let you adopt...

  • Either the camera is down again or it's moving at warp 9. I just got grey fuzz.

    From my house there wasn't anything to see. It's about 60 miles east of me. I suppose if I got closer it might be possible to see some steam rising from the crater, but a small amount of that is really quite common. Don't hold your breath folks...similar activity was recorded in 2002 and 1998, if I remember correctly, and quite a few more times since 1980. It'll probably pass quietly
  • Which is great, but where on earth (quite literally) is Mt St Helens?

    I can't seem to see it out my window.
    • Somewhere in the states... Washington, I believe?
    • by Cyberherbalist ( 731257 ) * on Monday September 27, 2004 @11:19PM (#10370155) Homepage
      Click on one of the bloody links and you might find out. It's in the US, in Washington state.

      You might or might not remember that in 1980 it blew up and killed 67 people, destroyed a couple hundred square miles of forest, and in general caused quite a fuss. It was one of the most destructive volcanic events ever recorded in recent history, so naturally everybody's forgotten about it in favor of tripe like jpegs that capture your computer or some such rot.

      • Oh come on, you don't actually expect me to RTFA, do you?

        Besides I did, saw static and came back here. I wonder if it has erupted already.
        • oops, ya made me laugh. RTFA, indeed.

          Nah, it didn't blow yet, somebody just forgot to pay the danged energy bill and the lights got shut off! Otherwise known as sunset. It would take a darned big Klieg light to make it visible under those conditions, too.

      • Dont't click on the link. There's probably a JPEG behind that link just waiting to infect you.

        They laughed at me when I installed lynx. Who's laughing now?
      • ever recorded in recent history

        I've always loved this phrase, at least since I first heard it yesterday.
        • Yeah, I had fun with it, too. I first wrote "ever recorded in history", then I thought to myself, "wait a minute, was Krakatoa [nodak.edu] bigger, or not?" Yeah, it probably was. Then I wondered if the explosion of the island of Thera/Sanotorini [nodak.edu] in the Aegean sea might have been even bigger --- although nobody actually seemed to have recorded that, as few records survive from that time. Hard to say. I finally settled on the phrase you liked so well. But it is very lame, as phrases go, isn't it? I should have lef
    • by Anonymous Coward
      Mt. St. Helens is in SW Washington state, about 50 miles north of Portland Oregon. It is a member of the Cascades mountain range, a line of active, dormant, and extinct peaks extending from Northern California, to Southern British Columbia. The next major volcano to the north of Mt. St. Helens is Mt. Rainier, and the next major Cascade volcano to the south is Mt. Hood. All three mountains are volcanoes that we can reasonably expect to erupt again.

      The Cascade volcanoes are formed by the subduction of the Ex

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