Wednesday, June 9, 2010

[Geology2] Mt. St. Helens, up close and personal

A facetious remark on my part elicits an interesting story of "man and
volcano" . . .

[Thread starts at bottom]

Re: Man and volcano
Posted by: "Dave Hansen" Daves.spot@gmail.com
Tue Jun 8, 2010 9:23 pm (PDT)

DaveH: Interesting you should mention that, Robert. One of my
customers at the time did just that. The red zone was quite large, as
they had no idea of if and when it would blow again. (Subsequently, it
popped off big time a total of 2 more times, if I remember correctly)

Several months after the initial eruption, the dome had grown quite
large and seemed somewhat stable (for something the size of small
mountain that was getting larger on a daily basis.) My customer loved
challenges, and being somewhat of a woodsy kind of guy, he hiked to the
top of the rim at night to avoid being detected by the policing agency
at the time and snapped a beautiful picture an hour or so before
sunrise. The background showed the orange skyline glow of the sun
beginning to brighten the sky, with Mt Rainier standing proud amongst
the darker surrounding hills. The foreground was mostly very dark and
hard to discern, as the growing dome was sitting in the mostly vacant
hole of the crater being sheltered from the ambient light .....But, you
could just make out the vastness of the 600 foot dome as it was glowing
a very dull red from being so hot.

My customer gave me a 12 x 16 print of it, and now.....I can't
remember what I did with it. Either we sold it at a moving sale a half
dozen years ago, or it is still in a box somewhere around here after
having survived 3 moves since then! :-( I just took a quick look
in my storage closet and didn't find it, but if I stumble onto it one of
these days, I'll take a picture of it and send it to you. It was quite
impressive!

robert-blau@webtv.net wrote:
>
>
> Gosh, Dave, the least you could have done was go up to the rim and
snap
> a picture! :)
>
> Posted by: "Dave Hansen" Daves.spot@gmail.com
> <mailto:Daves.spot%40gmail.com>
> Mon Jun 7, 2010 8:08 pm (PDT)
>
> DaveH: For those of us who have seen an active volcano up-chucking in
> real life....it is VERY IMPRESSIVE!!! In my case, it was Mt St
> Helens. And, driving through ash falling at night like a light snow
> storm is also quite memorable.
>
> robert-blau@webtv.net <mailto:robert-blau%40webtv.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Man and volcano
> > BBC, 28 May 2010
> >
> > On a recent flight from Britain to the United States, my plane took
a
> > circuitous route to avoid the by-now-all-too-familiar volcanic ash,
> with
> > the paradoxical result that we flew much nearer to Iceland, and much
> > nearer to the volcano, than we otherwise would've done. Even when
> > glimpsed from the safe distance of 30,000 feet, this was "shock and
> awe"
> > with a vengeance, reminiscent of the scenes so vividly described in
> the
> > letters written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus when Vesuvius
erupted
> in
> > AD 79. No wonder the ancient world was so fascinated by volcanoes:
the
> > Greeks thought that eruptions were a sign of divine disapproval; and
> the
> > word volcano derives from the small Mediterranean island of Vulcano,
> > named after Vulcan, who was the Roman god of fire.
> >
> > Read more:
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8711942.stm
>
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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