Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased

DarkHand writes "Mount St. Helens has become even more unstable in the last few hours. The U.S. Geological Surveys Cascades Volcano Observatory has increased the volcanic alert around the volcano to level 2 and released a press release: 'Over night, seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has accelerated significantly, which increases our level of concern that current unrest could culminate in an eruption. We are increasing the alert level to the second of three levels [...]. Earthquakes are occurring at about four per minute. The largest events are approaching Magnitude 2.5 and they are becoming more frequent. All are still at shallow levels in and below the lava dome that grew in the crater between 1980 and 1986. This suggests that the ongoing intense earthquake activity has weakened the dome, increasing the likelihood of explosions or perhaps the extrusion of lava from the dome.' The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated. The ground is now literally constantly rumbling."

To quote Counter-Strike:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Get outta there, it's gonna blow!"

REM fans unite

[Anonymous Coward]

.. if only to shout "Leonard Bernstein" at this point.

Scary, yet cool.

[methangel]

All of these hurricanes, tornadoes earthquakes, floods, and now volcano eruptions...when do the plagues and locusts start happening?

Dante II

[ancice]

Do people still remember the show Dante's Peak? It had a real cool legged robot which went into the volcano to collect samples. Wonder if these cool and useful machines are still being used or is everything remote sensing now?

memo to self

[Anonymous Coward]

Memo to self: Don't live anywhere near an active volcano.

If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

I could find a way to make Micro$oft seem responsible...

*spoiler alert*

[Anonymous Coward]

KABOOM!

Not to be gross...

[The Queen]

...but I've always thought of volcanos as Mother Earth's acne.

As I was watching Katie Couric interview one of the scientists this morning, I just kept thinking that these guys are all waiting for this big head to pop so they can collect measurements on the pus.

Sorry, kinda icky, but these are my thoughts. Mod down if you have a weak stomach.

Re:Scary, yet cool.

[theparanoidcynic]

You mean like in that little acid trip with the demons and the anticrist and everyone dying multiple times? :P

The situation is clear

[Anonymous Coward]

Washington possesses weapons of mass destruction. They must disarm immediately or face regime change.

Do you want the first warning to be a mushroom cloud over Washington State Park?

Ahh, this is the life

[PriceIke]

I'm sick of all these damn hurricanes, honey. Where else can we live?

I want to get as far away from this place as possible. How about Washington?

Works for me, let's go!

Re:Exciting!

[TykeClone]

I love hurricanes ... but then I live in the midwest so they won't directly affect me :).

Re:memo to self

[dykofone]

From the article: GPS instrument on the lava dome...suggest that the site moved a few inches northward Monday and Tuesday.

Looks like you also have to be sure you don't live in the path of an active volcano. At that rate Mount St. Helens could reach Canada in a few thousand years!

The end is near

[Solder Fumes]

By an interesting coincidence, I was born near Mt. St. Helens during the first eruption. Yes...as I was delivered from the womb, the city was covered with ash and filled with the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth *cough* I mean, sweeping and washing of streets.

Maybe with this next eruption, instead of merely being born, I'll actually get a life.

Due to severe slashdot effect...

[thrill12]

...our scientists are no longer able to monitor and analyze any vulcanic activity online.
Folks: you're on your own.

Alert Levels

[F7F7NoYes]

Have we positively ruled out terrorism as a cause of this seismic activity at this point?

Prank Volcano

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be a big white flag coming out of the crater reading "BOOM!" any minute now...

Re:Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont watch it for too long or when the cammera start broadcasting again there will be an ant really close to the lense making the ant look over 10 feet tall scaring everyone who watches. On the news that night, all the anchors will say I for one welcome our new invading overlords.

/. pwns you

[Southpaw018]

Google news summary:
News results for mount st. helens - View today's top stories
Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased - Slashdot - 9 minutes ago
Experts Predict Mount St. Helens Eruption - ABC News - 10 minutes ago

Yes, that's right. /. beat ABC news to the story. Take that!

Breaking News...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush declares the volcano part of the "Axis of Lava", declares "War on Volcanos" and sends bombers to the area to eliminate the threat.

Re:Exciting!

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Man, way to start a flame war.

Or would that be a magma flow war?

Re:Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

[Java Pimp]

seems not to be broadcasting now. Anyone knows why...

Yeah, you just /.ed it.

Re:Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

[mikael]

It could one of two things; Either the volcano's emitting a hallucingenic purple fog or it's a foggy dawn. I can't say for certain which one of the two it is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Alert Levels

[PriceIke]

Not yet. In fact, certain congressional Democrats are "very concerned" that putting out these volcano warnings are just Republican scare-tactics. John Kerry (D-Mass) issued a statement this morning saying "Mt. St. Helens is angry, because the earth is angry at President Bush's failed environmental policies .."

Re:Scary, yet cool.

[zev1983]

Florida was punished for the 2000 election. Washington is being punished for Microsoft.

Re:/. pwns you

[Southpaw018]

*hangs his head*
Serves me right for trying to score some karma points when I've been awake for 10 minutes.

Re:Scary, yet cool.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

All's that's left is for the sea to turn to blood.

Oh. Nevermind [nzherald.co.nz]

Re:/. pwns you

[RPI Geek]

Google news summary:
News results for mount st. helens - View today's top stories
Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased - Slashdot - 9 minutes ago
Experts Predict Mount St. Helens Eruption - ABC News - 10 minutes ago
Yes, that's right. /. beat ABC news to the story. Take that!

Good to know that other /. readers can actually do math...

Tonight during the debate...

[Darkstar9969]

...Bush will blame the eruption on Al Qaeda and send National Guard troops to Washington state then completely fail to find any lava of mass destruction.

Re:To quote Counter-Strike:

[Ubergrendle]

Too bad no one has a defuse kit... :(

I never thought I'd see the day....

[Anonymous Coward]

that Condelezza Rice would be trolling webforums.... Quite a step a up.

Re:/. pwns you

[Atzanteol]

Wow, if I reported it *now* I could beat them both!

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Re:You think Mt. St. Helens was big...

[xtal]

If Yellowstone blows, you should be studying theology, not geology. :-)

Re:Mt St Helens seismic and other info

[slackerboy]

I'm hoping it's really foggy out there this morning, because the image that I'm getting is just a very soothing blue color.

Re:Be afraid if the volcanoes ever stop

[__aafutm5472]

I hate when my carbonated planet goes flat...

A problem that Slashdotters can conquer!

[Conspir8or]

Clearly, Mt. St. Helens is near eruption because it is starved for virgin sacrifices!

Re:Dante II

[American AC in Paris]

Darby's Seventeenth Rule of Scientific Discussion

When discussing vulcanology, one should avoid using as one's primary reference a movie in which Pierce Brosnan successfully drives a pickup truck over several meters of red-hot lava.

You know you're doomed when...

[leftie]

I did Hurricanes Camille, Agnes, and Hugo on the East Coast. I've done tornadoes and blizzards in Michigan. I was in LA for huge brush and forest fires, the Rodney King riots, and the Northridge Quake. I now live in Portland, OR. Yea.

On the "harbingers of doom" ratings scale, hearing I'm moving to town is like running into Jim Cantore in a hotel lobby.

Strange Coincidence...

[mpath]

I was reading the latest book from Patrick Robinson [barnesandnoble.com] (Scimitar SL-2 [barnesandnoble.com]) and the gist of the book is that terrorists are going around exploding cruise missles (from a nuclear sub) into volcanoes, making them erupt, causing terror/destruction, etc and they first warmed up with making Mount Saint Helens erupt. Their end-goal was to erupt some island volcano (Cumbre Vieja [uci.kun.nl]) out in the North Atlantic, causing huge tsunamis to wipe out the entire East Coast of the US, plus some in the UK/Europe, too.

The descriptions of the tsunamis were incredible (I know it's a fiction book, but still...): 100 ft. high waves travelling at high speeds, one after another. Sure, some buildings may survive one of those, but several?

Good book, but had to give it back to the library before I could finish it.

Re:Mt. Rainier even more potential than St. Helens

[tntguy]

Last year or the year before when they had the (false) lahar warning for Rainier, a friend of mine -- a 911 dispatcher -- was on a date when he got the emergency page. This woman, quite the clingy "me-first" type, got uppity with him for looking at his pager. He told her he had to go, there was an emergency. She didn't believe him. He stood up in the middle of the restaraunt and said, loudly, "Mt. Fucking-Rainier is erupting...call a cab.". That was their first (and last) date. :-)

As an aside, anyone remember Jim Foreman (news reporter) doing a live broadcast from Harborview doing his normal melodramatic report that "dozens of casualties are being flown in now...we'll be here to report on it"? Good times.

Re:To quote Counter-Strike:

[mwood]

Someone be sure to tell all those Californians who came and built $3,000,000 houses perched on sticks halfway up the side of the mountain.

Not terrorism: Liberals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only George W Bush has a plan to save America from Volcanoe-sponsored terrorism! If his opponent is elected, America will be in danger of destruction from weak-on-lava liberal policies and the usual liberal flip-floppy-stance on ash.

Save America from Volcanoe's, Vote Bush 2004!

Re:Mt St Helens seismic and other info

[fizban]

That soothing blue color is just there to make sure you don't see anything that could alarm or disrupt you this morning, like for instance an erupting volcano.

(Thank you D.A.!)

Re:Exciting!

[oldwarrior]

I love gamma radiation, but I live in an abandoned lead mine...

Oblig Simpsons Quote

[fizban]

"At least we'll die doing what we love...inhaling molten rock"
-Homer

Re:*spoiler alert*

[Tackhead]

> KABOOM!

"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow... What? Somebody's gotta have some damned perspective around here! One day, BOOM!"

(muttering to herself) "Boom. boomboomboom. BOOM!"

- Susan Ivanova, Babylon 5

SEP seismograph?

[Watcher]

The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated.
Somebody Else's Problem seismograph? What does it do, make the volcano disappear if it becomes too inconvenient?

Defrag?

[tag]

The most recent readings at the SEP seismograph stationed on the lava dome itself are totally saturated. [washington.edu]

Looks like Mount St. Helens is about to defrag.

Re:Portland Oregon threatened in last eruption

[mranchovy]

Now it looks like a million-seat football stadium

...with a cool halftime show.

My 1980 eruption anecdote

[grgyle]

I was ten years old living down in Vancouver, WA back in 1980. We had a pristine view of the mountain from our back yard and would constantly have "eruption barbeques" at the house.

During one of the many ash-falls that used to regularly dust us, my brother and I ran out one morning to play in the new ash before our parents woke up. There was about 1-2 inches coating everything, like new snow, and it had just rained making all of the ash into an interesting clay-like consistency.

Kids being kids, my little brother and I ran out to the driveway and started writing our names with our fingers into the ash covering my dad's brand new 1 day old VW Scirroco in the driveway. It started out with "Hi" and "Cool" and progressed to "Van Halen kicks ass" and "KISS rules" and liberal scrawlings of "dork", "shit", "Tony sucks dick", drawings of boobies and penises, you get the idea.

Well, we got into a hell of a lot of trouble when my dad saw the car when he had to wipe all of the ash off to drive to work. Our trouble later escalated when he discovered that, after going through a car wash to rinse off the rest, everything that we had written on his car was now premanently scratched into the paint and windows of his car, ash being a fine gritty silicate. Our dad's co-workers ribbed him endlessly about his "custom paint job" as it took him several weeks before he could get his car repainted and the windows replaced.

All told, a few thousand dollar "oops" for us kids ;)

You can't win

[Anonymous Coward]

Live in the northwest: Volcanoes

Live in the southwest: Earthquakes

Live on the east coast: Hurricanes

Live in the south/central part of the country: Tornadoes

Live in the north: Blizzards

Live in Indiana: You have to live in Indiana

Re:Scary, yet cool.

[Kehvarl]

I here quote Plan B from the Ultimate Ineffable Guide to Being a Deity. Part of the Complete Idiot's Guides for Dummies series of Training Manuals:

Plan B: Fsck it.

Re:Dante II

[peacefinder]

I was trapped on an airplane when I saw Dante's Peak. (Flying into Seattle, no less.) That is, with the possible exception of Reefer Madness, the worst movie I have ever seen. I was about ready to pull a DB Cooper just to get away from it, but mercifully the nice lady from British Airways clubbed me unconscious.

Now that's good airline service.