Rising steam and a magnitude 2.9 earthquake rattled Mount St. Helens this week prompting scientists to discontinue internal human monitoring of the crater. The quake was followed by an hour and a half long small tremor which ended with another quake. The second one registered a magnitude 2.7.
“The settling of the growing lava dome might have caused some fracturing and might have changed the subsurface openings so that water was either being squeezed out of openings or opening new areas,” Cynthia A. Gardner, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory, said Tuesday.
No evacuations had been ordered by Wednesday due to a slowdown in seismic activity.
In the bookstore: Mount St. Helens (books)
Note: Image above is from the small eruption in 1982.
Tags: lava dome, Mount St. Helens, volcano
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Does anyone know if there has been any more activity on Mount St Helens since this post?