In case anyone is interested, you can sign up for detailed email alerts from various USGS volcano observatories when there is a change in activity. I received one for Mount Adams a week and a half ago. This article is essentially re-publishing those alerts.
Man I would die of shame if I ever wrote something as bad as
"it’s not yet clear if the increase in seismic activity is anything more than just an unusually high number of tremors."
A geologist friend of mine in the PNW has taught me that this is normal, you can make few predictions and everything is unclear. Every time I ask whether something is connected I get "it could be but only sometimes and we don't know for sure". Though the word "just" is almost always unnecessary.
I live within 20 miles of this volcano. I've been reading the reporting. The further we've gotten from the original report the more FUD gets sprinkled in. This "article" takes the cake. Each time it notes that these events are really no big deal, the author precedes and / or follows with some form of "It's gonna blow ! / Be scared!". In fact, it's like they copy / pasted the original reporting and added BS drama for effect. Terrible article.
Well for a look at how the pros do it, check out the FUDdy-duddys at https://www.express.co.uk/latest/yellowstone-volcano to see the UK-Express Yellowstone Article Roll of Doom. It goes on forever, and is now hilariously sprinkled with soap opera gossip from the Yellowstone TV series which is a shame, it used to be all volcano all the time.
Volcanoes give you a lot of warning and most in Washington are not located close to major population centers. The one exception is Mount Rainier, which is on the Decade Volcano list. Technically Glacier Peak is a similar distance from Seattle but it is a much smaller volcano and risk of damage is much lower. Historically the Cascade volcanoes only erupt something like 2-3 times per century and most are minor. It isn’t something anyone really worries about. Much higher risk from earthquakes.
I lived down range of Mount St. Helens when it had its major eruption in 1980. It was a regional disaster but the recovery was relatively quick and few people died despite the epic scale of it.
Wow. I sit corrected - I had no idea it could impact so far north, but I see maps show flooding there potentially! Thanks for teaching me something new.
I did the lahar hike to the 'now closed off' johnson observatory. The amount of terrain devastation that is still clearly evident over 40 years later is terrifying
Here in seattle, volcanoes feel like an afterthought attached to the thing that's actually scary, which is the Cascadia Subduction Zone[1]. There's an hour long presentation from CWU [2] that's dry but fascinating, and pretty free of popsci FUD. When the CSZ eventually goes, it's gonna be truly catastrophic.
The guy giving the talk in that video is Nick Zentner. He's great and manages to make what could otherwise be fairly dry content very interesting.... and he's got his own YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GeologyNick
His "Ice Age Floods A to Z" series was must watch TV for me last winter.
I just finished watching Dante's Peak which was an enjoyable little confection, great cast, geology-nerd approved 100%.
Mt. St. Helens was a big deal in my childhood in Southern California, and I'm fairly certain that we were generously sprinkled with her ashes from 1,200mi away. It was not long afterward that yours truly earned the nickname "Mt. St. Helens" for my explosive temper and tendency to attack my bullies. Ah well!
I'm tied into many seismic sensors around the planet through Google Earth, almost all of them USGS-owned.
Very little is happening around or under Mt. Adams. St. Helens is seeing actual noteworthy activity, and even that's still lower than magnitude 1 in almost every event, and those that get higher than 1 99.9999% of the time do not reach magnitude 2.
There isn't a huge amount to worry about from the volcanoes, unless a body of water intrudes into a magma chamber. Worry more about the Cascadia subduction zone letting a good one rip.
The Mt. Saint Helens eruption was precipitated by a landslide, which reduced pressure over the caldera, leading to a sideways-launched blowout of the volcano itself. That landslide might very well itself have been triggered by an earthquake.
Other possible mechanisms would be either the widening of a magma tube or fissure (permitting higher pressures to the surface), or the introduction of water (crustal or near subsurface) to a magma tube, with the ensuing steam explosion precipitating an eruption.
The role of water in vulcanism is something I'd not been aware of until relatively recently. The Ring of Fire volcanoes form largely around subduction faults, generally inland of where an oceanic plate subducts beneath a continental plate. The oceanic plate carries with it large volumes of seawater, and as that plate itself intersects with (and is absorbed into) the mantle, that incorporated water flashes to steam. The steam pressure itself then plays a major function in generating pressures and driving magma toward the surface. This is also why volcanic eruptions tend to have so much steam as part of the emergent material, so far as I understand.
Another recent eruption in which water (in this case seawater) played a huge role was the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai event, occurring as seawater flooded into a large, shallow caldera, flashing to steam with explosive consequence. Whether or not that event was preciptated by an earthquake again isn't clear, but could be possible. Other mechanisms might have been a cascading failure of the overlying roof of the caldera, with smaller introductions of water expanding access and leading to the catastrophic failure and explosion.
There's some scientific research into the question:
"A review framework of how earthquakes trigger volcanic eruptions" (2021)
Also, “water” (quotes due to the fact it’s hard to actually call it water under these conditions) and sea floor minerals like carbonates change the actual viscosity and chemical composition of the magma in interesting ways that encourage all this too. It’s not just bulk water flashing to steam.
Why shouldn't it? I imagine volcanoes as evolving pressure situation slowly tipping towards eruption. Anything that disturbs situation and tips it faster towards eruption, like an earthquake seems as a reasonable assumption. Not that all earthquakes tips it towards it, sometimes maybe it actually relieves the pressure, depends how things move and crack.
Absolutely. Anything from landslides to temporary liquefaction of the ground can weaken the caldera or surrounding vents enough to allow the pressure to force magma to the surface or higher.
Obviously the native american volcano spirits are angry with the state legislature for violating the state constitution's prohibition against state income taxes through the LTC tax. The message is clear: we must appease the angry spirits by scrapping the LTC tax, returning Washington to a natural state of balance, calming the spirits, and thus the volcano.
Maybe don't do it till it goes back to sleep but... Mt Adams is one (I think the only one?) of the major volcanoes in WA that you can climb without ropes as it can be accessed by a route free of crevasses. Need an ice axe though as there is a snow field. EDIT -excepting Mt St Helens, but that isn't snow-capped
