Mt. St. Helens Expected to Blow

My husband and I lived in Spokane, WA ("Spoh-KANN") when Mt. St. Helens exploded May 18, 1980. Spokane is 300 miles east of the volcano, so it took several hours for the ash cloud to reach us, and all the heavy particles had fallen to the ground long before it got to Spokane. By the time it reached us, it was like fine talcum powder--finer that a car's air filter could keep out of the engine--and we got about a quarter to half an inch of it. Spokane was shut down for three days, and most of the Highway Patrol's cars were incapacitated by the ash.

As the ash cloud covered the sky in the early afternoon, the day darkened the way it had the year before for the eclipse, and then the ash began to fall. As it powdered the ground and more ash hung in the air, the light that filtered through the clouds reflected off the ash in a way that made it look as though the sun was shining up from below. It was the strangest, most fascinating, natural light effect I've ever seen.

And now the scientists who monitor Mt. St. Helens think it's ready to explode again. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported yesterday that scientists have been watching the pressure--and the lava dome--building since 2004.

Scientists believe Mount St. Helens will erupt today, the 26th anniversary of the explosive eruption that produced the world's largest known landslide, killed 57 people and launched a new era in volcanology.

"It's been erupting almost continuously since late 2004," said Tom Pierson, a U.S. Geological Survey researcher at the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver. So it's a good bet it will also erupt today, Pierson said.

But that eruption would be the smaller kind that's been recurring the past couple years.

Unlike the massive, catastrophic blast of 1980, the current eruption on St. Helens is slowly, steadily pushing up a relatively cool and solid column of lava rock, or magma.

Then there are the drumbeats.

"We really wanted to figure out what those were all about," Dzurisin said.

In September 2004, St. Helens announced its reawakening with some seismic rumbling -- a swarm of earthquakes.

The drumbeats began a little later, in October 2004. After the first swarm of episodic quakes, the volcano soon fell into a regular, rhythmic drumbeat of small quakes that mystified scientists and largely continue to this day.

These scientists obviously haven't seen Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, or they'd know what underground drumbeats mean: The goblins are swarming into formation and coming to attack.

The USGS scientists have a different theory of molten rock movement, pressure, and cooling, but what do they know?

They've spread their volcano-watching to include Mt. Ranier, which tends to have volcanic mudslides rather than explosions, but which is still considered dormant.

Regardless of what happens with Washington's volcanos, the scientists are doing their best to watch them, predict eruptions, and keep the public in-the-know when needed. When I know, you'll know.