A guy I know online is an amateur geologist, and for the past couple of weeks he has been scaring the bejeebus out of all of us at “The Site Which Must Not Be Named” by sharing his take on the wild and woolly seismic data recently coming from the Yellowstone Caldera. I can’t even begin to explain it to you, but his assessment is that the USGS is intentionally underplaying the potential for a serious “event” because the predictive tools geologists use are not terribly…well…predictive. It’s his impression that something will happen sooner rather than later, though with the sort of time scales geologists use sooner could be years or decades while later could be millennia.
So this morning, the news has been all abuzz about an alert from the USGS that Mount Redoubt in Alaska, which is an active volcano that last erupted in 1990, is about to erupt again. The activity is almost certainly related to the other seismic goings on, as activity in a particular zone can cause a sort of “ripple effect”, but probably isn’t the Big Event this guy has been warning us about. This is just a normal, if somewhat sudden, eruption for a recently-active volcano. There’s a website here, complete with webcam, but they have been slammed all day, so good luck getting to see anything.
The eruption won’t be the same sort of earth-shattering kaboom that Mount St. Helens made back in 1980, but they’re expecting that it will throw enough ash to reach Anchorage, about 100 miles away. My connection tells us that from the data he’s seen, he thinks the mountain will blow within the next 48 hours, although the USGS has only posted an “orange” alert…not to be confused with the DHS’s permanent orange alert for those terrorists who could strike any second now. It’s nice to know that a volcano on the verge of blowing its top is somehow roughly equivalent to imaginary boogeymen, but I digress…
Once the volcano does blow, Alaska officials and FEMA should step right in and make plans to throw Sarah Palin directly into the gaping hellhole to try to appease the angry fire gods. After all, she’s the one who disturbed them in the first place with all that maverickin’.
When they throw Sarah Palin in, could they add Bush and Chaney in that pile being thrown in? Thanks! I would gladly contribute to the expences!
Redoubt and without doubt, Yellowstone are brewing because of the anger of Pele at morons that doubt Palin.
I’m curious. What’s the “site which must not be named”?
Brian,
I’m glad to read that I am not the only nerd interested in anything about the Yellowstone Caldera. I try to watch anything on the History or discovery Channel about Calderas. Based on what I’ve seen there isn’t much we can do to prepare for an event at that level. Which is probably why the USGS isn’t saying much. You are absolutly right about the ripple effect when Mt. Redoubt blows. I live in California and the day Mt. St. Helens blow we had numerous small earthquakes in the Mammoth Lakes area in the Sierra Mountains. Since I work in the Bay Area my biggest fear is that when Mt. Redoubt goes it will trigger an earthquake on the Hayward fault. The Hayward fault is ready to go and from what I’ve read it will be a 7+ quake.
Lets hope that Sara Palin is enough to appease the fire gods. Maybe we shoud add Rush Linbaugh for good measure.
Mt. Redoubt might spit her back out. There has been lots of geologic activity in these parts…Alaska has had multiple earthquakes since before Christmas, Montana too and so has Western Washington…an a fairly moderate quake (4.5) shook Seattle this morning. If Mt. St. Helen’s starts bubbling again, then I’m sure much of our region will be under ash soon enough (at least in that geologic way of measuring time like you mentioned)
I want to know what, if any, correlation there is between the earthquakes around Catalina Island CA, and Washington state, and Redoubt. If that whole area is getting hot somebody should tell us.
A couple of brief followups:
1. Welcome to the thousands of visitors who have found your way here from CNN. I hope you take a moment to have a look around and maybe even come back for another visit.
2. My geology guru doesn’t seem to be any better at predicting seismic events than the professionals, since here we are more than 48 hours later and no ka-boom. But, as I mentioned, geological time is a lot slower than human time. Keep watching.