[californiadisasters] Admin Note: Mt. St. Helens 30th Anniversary

Thirty years ago this morning was a Sunday morning and I was ten years old and getting ready for church.

As a child news-junky and geo-nerd I had been following the ongoing drama at Mt. St. Helens with great interest.

Then the first report of a major eruption came through on the television or radio and all of a sudden the day took on a different complexion.

I later received as a gift some ash from the eruption of May 18th as well as a chunk of pumice which became a proud part of my mineral collection for years to come.

The significance of this to California Disasters is that the Cascade Range (of which Mt. St. Helens is part) extends all the way down to Mount Lassen in Northern California, east of Redding.

We will soon be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the start of Mt. Lassen's most recent eruptive phase (2014).

Hotlum Cone on Mt. Shasta last erupted (and was seen by early explorers) in the 1780's.

In 1910 local ranchers reported dark ash clouds and ash falls in the Medicine Lake Highlands area around Glass Mountain east of Mt. Shasta.

In 1951 there was a large cryptovolcanic explosion at Lake City Hot Springs in Surprise Valley in Northeast California (Modoc Co.).

The point of this list being that California is subject to volcanism from the Cascade Range much more commonly than most Californians realize and those living in vulnerable areas need to make note of this.

As the recent eruption of Chile's Chaiten Volcano has demonstrated, there is not always a lot of forewarning of a volcano reawakening by way of seismicity and deformation and changes in gas and water chemistry, etc.

Although Chaiten is not typical of all volcanoes it is nonethelss a "gray" volcano like the Cascade volcanoes so who is to say some of them cannot do what Chaiten did in 2008.

What did Chaiten do? Well, after being dormant for 9000 years it generated an ashfall within 24 hours of the first earthquakes and erupted catastrophically within another 24 hours.

So be prepared at all times and then you don't have to worry about things and can enjoy your life without living in a fools paradise of ignorance and unpreparedness.

Kim Patrick Noyes
Paso Robles, CA

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