Mystery Ash Clouds Rain In Parts of Washington, Oregon 77
Inland parts of Oregon and Washington, as well as Idaho, have experienced a strange, murky rain today that contains what seems to be volcanic ash, though ash from which volcano isn't completely clear. Experts said they are checking out several possible explanations including a recent volcanic eruption in Mexico and one in Russia. The weather service said the rainstorm may have passed through some dust or volcanic ash as it moved west. Walla Walla County's emergency management staff posted a statement on its Facebook page that the ash is likely from Volcano Shiveluch in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, some 3,000 miles away. Volcano Shiveluch spewed an ash plume about 22,000 feet high in late January, the statement said.... CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam, meanwhile, pointed to an eruption Wednesday of a volcano in southwestern Colima, Mexico, as another potential source of the dirty rain. That volcano is more than 2,000 miles away from the region.
Time points out that other theories include leftover ash from last year’s wildfires in Oregon in Idaho.
NSA reactor waste (Score:2, Interesting)
It's from the buried NSA facility in Yakima, They're blowing the pipes.
Re: (Score:2)
The Ball Bearing plant was shut down a few years ago, the NRO said so. That's why all those huge dishes are still there and move from time to time.
https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
Re:Yellowstone! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yellowstone! (Score:5, Funny)
If that have gone off, ashy rain would be the least of our problems.
"Look, Ma, it's raining pieces of Chicago!"
Mystery? (Score:1)
Seems like chemical analysis of the ash could solve this mystery pretty easily.
Re:Mystery? (Score:5, Funny)
Seems like chemical analysis of the ash could solve this mystery pretty easily.
Anyone that watches TV knows they just need to put some it into the analyzer and they'll have the source of the ash in minutes. I don't understand why don't they just do that?
Re: (Score:3)
Are amateur scientists EXTINCT? (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, it would be pretty easy to figure out if it was wooden ash or volcanic ash.
Yeah, lack of even simple chemical analysis -- let alone spectral at this point in time. It's disturbing. I've been tracking this odd phenomenon, I even had a Slashdot submission typed up about it. No, not about the cloud/substance itself, about the reaction.
We seem to be a whole country filled with cell phone cameras, social media sharers, windshield wipers, action news reporters, meteorologists running computer models. Our news sources (correctly) posit that it is likely volcanic ash, and the comments on the news stories are peppered with the usual shallow pond tripe about chemtrails, Fukushima crap. And a news item here and there ends with some expert musing obviously, "without a chemical analysis it's difficult to tell..."
Every one is seeming to allude to a a series of samples collected and sent to a lab by the Weather Service. We're not curious enough to go out and get the stuff ourselves, that's the job of experts. We're all waiting --- not for more information, such as preliminary results of base composition... nope, we will wait for the source to be scientifically determined beyond doubt, at which point a press conference will be held.
Here is an interesting mystery that has dropped right into our lap. How many chem labs are in the affected area? How many undergrad students, Universities laboratories? How many mass spectrometers?
It's like the Dog That Didn't Bark. Blah blah blah, no actual boots on the ground analysis. News blah, wait for expert results blah.
In a world with more technical capability than ever before,
less than ever was actually attempted.
Could be fallout from a Transit Cloud [freemalaysiatoday.com]
Or residue from a Brain Cloud [youtube.com]
"You have some time left. You have some life left.
My advice to you is, live it well."
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe because it's not that easy?
OK, so I go out and collect enough muddy water in a non-contaminated vessel, and happen to have a microscope powerful enough to see particulate matter that can be airborn for 2-3k+ Miles. Say it turns out to be volcanic in origin... then what? I personally have access to a XRD machine, but scans would show.... nothing since volcanic glass is amorphous ( no crystal structure ). Maybe the XRF could pick out a few peaks from microcrystalline structures, but it's highly unlikely
Re: (Score:2)
I'm actually surprised that someone at university in the Pacific Northwest has not taken a sample of the rainwater and do some chemical analysis. If it is volcanic ash, they need to compare against the volcanic ash spewed out from Sakurajima just east of the city of Kagoshima in Japan or the Shiveluch volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia, both of which have erupted in the last month or so.
Re: (Score:1)
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].
Potheads (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, come on, Oregon and Washington LEGALIZED IT, it's just some pot festival sent too much smoke and ash up from western WA/OR. A quick THC test should tell you all you need to know.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
hah. eastern oregon and wash are about as red and conservative as you'll find in the US. They are closer to Texas (sans austin) politically than anywhere else.
(Source: grew up in Milton-Freewater, just south of Walla Walla)
Re:Potheads (Score:4, Insightful)
hah. eastern oregon and wash are about as red and conservative as you'll find in the US.
And red-state conservatives don't smoke pot?
Re:Potheads (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how the red states roll. Neo-Apartheid. I was born white in one, and had plenty of friends of various ethnic backgrounds. The big lie is that it doesn't happen, mainly told by people who have seen it happen, but refuse to believe it because it would make them "evil" to endorse and condone it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure how it hit 5 inciteful, but it's a on-topic response to the previous comment, which was about drug use in conservative states.
Is your comment any more on-topic on a post about ash? No? Then that makes you a hypocrite. And dismissing the race situation pegs you as a conservative (and yes, a libertarian is a "conservative" by the US definitions, and a "neo-liberal" by international definition
Re: (Score:2)
Why would that be? Walla Walla and its surroundings produce lots of good wine. Plenty of anesthetic to soothe your pain. :-)
Re: (Score:3)
Luckily there are recreational marijuana shops in eastern Wa, and some wildernesses where you can smoke pot out in the open for days without encountering humans. Screw the political retards; this land was made for you and me.
Re: (Score:2)
Muddy Frogwater
Re: (Score:2)
Funny post. The replies, on the other hand, really flew off on a tangent.
sr
"There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em."
Yogi Berra
Industrial Tectonics (Score:2)
Geo-engineering
Back in the '60s and '70s a friend and I would occasionally take a back road from Ann Arbor to the "Dexter-Chelsea Industrial Complex" (a Vietnam War in-joke). We'd pass a small commercial site (always deserted on weekends) labeled "Industrial Tectonics".
She made up a nice rant about how they're been hired by the "Committee to Reunite Gonwanaland" to adjust continental drift to re-merge the continents into a single supercontinent.
(Later I found that "industrial tectonics" was about making fa
Meanwhile in Oregon (Score:2)
It's just raining, like it usually does with normal wet drop of water. No sign of gunk on my windscreen.
Re:Meanwhile in Oregon (Score:5, Interesting)
It only hit Hermiston. Mostly it was farther north.
Having already seen the media reports hours ago, it is already known that it is from Siberia, on the Pacific coast. This is where most of the rain in the NW comes from.
People speculating Mexico or Guatamala are simply new to the meteorology of the region. To local sources a glance at a recent eruption map makes and it is instantly obvious there is 1 known candidate, and it would explain it perfectly.
("Just rain" in my part of Oregon, too)
Re:Meanwhile in Oregon (Score:4, Interesting)
People speculating Mexico or Guatamala are simply new to the meteorology of the region. To local sources a glance at a recent eruption map makes and it is instantly obvious there is 1 known candidate, and it would explain it perfectly.
("Just rain" in my part of Oregon, too)
Same here in Bend. It's been pretty windy, trees falling. Nowhere like the rain west of the mountains of course. But there were fires all around last summer. No dirty rain falling here. Hell, at 50+ degrees it's almost been like a spring rain. So sorry for our mountain snow pack, however.
Siberia though, makes more sense. The jet stream seems to be pushing a lot of air our way. Not just dirty Beijing air, either, it seems. Or is it... ? :)
I grew up in Spokane and was there when St. Helens erupted. That was ash fall.
Re: (Score:3)
I was in Ellensburg for St. Helens, it was dark for 3 days. The government said to wait for test results before going outside, in case of deadly gas, but we just waited until we saw birds taking dust baths. My family moved south about the time the roads were clear.
Re: (Score:2)
Wet weather with wind from the south generally starts from the South China Sea, in the Bay of Thailand area, comes past Hawaii, and makes a break north off the coast of California.
Most of our wet weather is colder, and comes via the Bering Sea or the Gulf of Alaska.
When we get weather that is significantly from the South of us it is when the Great Basin spills a dry high pressure zone over onto us. Then it can be from Mexico or further, via Arizona.
Anything coming in off the ocean will have come mostly from
Leftover Ash? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Presumably they found that on the comments page.
obvious (Score:3)
yeah, you got us, it's the chemtrail thing (Score:5, Funny)
Some of the sheeple I monitor on FB figured out that "they" are spreading thought control gas using airplane fuel. At the last meeting of the Illuminati board I asked if we could contaminate fuel supplies worldwide why weren't we doing that with regular car fuel instead... would reach more people rather than just those under flight paths. Then one of the guys came up with the idea of adding the thought control formula to erupting volcanoes so that it's harder to trace it to us. I still think it's a bit inefficient and too 007-super-villain way of doing things but the higher ups always know best. oh well. Back to fudging the lottery numbers for next weekend I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nah.. this administrationand science departments will just clsim it is global warming andvdemand some new powers.
And I stayed indoors most of the day, (Score:2)
It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.
Re: (Score:2)
It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.
Update: this morning I went outside and everything was covered with dirt subtle in some areas, I started to think about this article so checked out my white truck, it's covered in dirt. Ya we got something dumped on us.
Re: (Score:2)
It rain most of the day here in Washington next to the Oregon border, only dog would of noticed; and he didn't seem concerned.
I started to think about this article so checked out my white truck, it's covered in dirt. Ya we got something dumped on us.
Dirt is misleading it's of a blackish nature on a white surface, I took a magnetic to it but inconclusive.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was wondering about it maybe being magnetic because of the weird AM band disturbances...I even got some small spikes on my SDR way down into the ELF band where there isn't ever anything. The K garlicy smell was wild, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.
Re: (Score:2)
Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.
Tri-Cities.
Re: (Score:2)
Where are you located? Sounds like we might be neighbors.
Tri-Cities.
I said that off the cuff, I sent another reply that didn't seem to make it:
60 miles away from you and it was 63 degrees yesterday while the norm has been 40-50.
Ground Zero (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm right here in Walla Walla County and I can say that I noticed odd things beginning the night before last following one of the warmest chinooks I can remember in my life, it reached 72 F outside my house after being in the low 30s under 12 hours before. Within hours after that began, odd AM radio reception disturbances that came and went in waves from total static to unbelievably good and seemingly overpowered sometimes within seconds and other times over maybe 15 minutes started. I noticed an odd metallic aftertaste when I woke up the next morning (unlike blood or iron), all of these things happened before I even knew any of this was going on. I do a little playing around with software defined radio and radio telescopy/aircraft communication apps and I saw readings that lit up whole areas very high up nor could I receive any plane comms which was pretty unusual.
The volcanic ash story seems pretty specious to me, I'm more inclined to believe the TIME hypothesis of wildfire ash because the chinook was very abrupt and warm, I can grasp how an odd temperature inversion in such a short amount of time along with high speed winds might pick up heavier ash particles that wouldn't normally travel, lift them up very high, then drop them over my area. Volcanic ash doesn't travel large distances and drop suddenly in a small area all at once. Even if it did, I would think that there would have been much, much more present. This stuff in the rain was also not at pulverized as volcanic ash, I still have a vial of Mt. St. Helens' ash my parents gathered nearby from when I was really young. This stuff was also a good deal darker. I can say that it does not smell like soot, it has a faint metallic/garlic one but it doesn't permeate the area like I'd think it would. Just wanted to give a "man-on-the-ground" report for my fellow /.ers.
Re: (Score:2)
I noticed an odd metallic aftertaste when I woke up the next morning (unlike blood or iron), all of these things happened before I even knew any of this was going on.
The manual specifically states your not supposed to sleep with the tin foil hat. This is what happens. Now you are all contaminated.
Re: (Score:2)
Metallic/garlic taste would tend to indicate some sort of Sulphur/Selenium compounds in whatever you were tasting. I could see that coming from volcanic ash.
"Pineapple Express" (i.e. from Hawaii) (Score:2)
Are there volcanoes in Hawaii? (And, do bears sleep in the woods?)
Cant understand this but _can_ predict climate ? (Score:1)
No this isn't "weather", this is large scale transport of particles in the atmosphere. And that is kind of critical to understanding climate (and weather).
Which simply tells you that the models, while possibly precise, are not accurate.
And when you are talking about sweeping changes in government policy or, more frighteningly, attempts at geo-engineering, then your models should be very accurate.
Or come with a warning and a statement of margin of error.
Pollution (Score:2)
It's probably industrial pollution from China