The Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful areas that you will find in the United States. It is filled with some of the most breathtaking mountains that one could only imagine. We may look at them and think that they are just mountains that have grown over geological time, but they are more than that. In reality, a lot of them are volcanoes. The most popular one is Mount St. Helens. Mt. St. Helens is located in southwest Washington, just 50 miles northeast of Portland, Oregon. It is one of the peaks of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest. I, along with thousands of other people, have taken the opportunity to climb Mt. St. Helens. With its stunning and incredible views from the peak, you also get a surreal feeling that is a little discomforting. Maybe it could be because Mt. St. Helens is very much still alive.
Mt. St. Helens started to grow during the Pleistocene Epoch. It started with dacite and andesite eruptions that existed of hot pumice and ash. Large mudflows flowed down the volcano, which have become important pieces to the eruptive cycles of this volcano. Later, there was another eruptive period, along with the pyroclastic flows of hot pumice and ash, was dome growth. Mt. St. Helens has been one of the most active volcanoes, but has experienced long periods when it has been dormant as well. It was considered a composite volcano, which was a symmetrical cone with steep sides. Most composite volcanoes are known to have explosive eruptions, which could be very dangerous to life and property nearby. From 40,000 years go until its most dramatic eruption in May 1980, Mt. St. Helens continues to show us life still exists within it. Within the last 2000 years, Mt. St. Helens has “been more active...
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Lipman, Peter W., and Donal Ray Mullineaux. The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington. Reston, Va.?: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1981. Print.
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Wood and Kienle, 1990, Volcanoes of North America: United States and Canada: Cambridge University Press, 354 p., p. 158-160, Contribution by Patrick Pringle.
On May 18th, 1980, one of the most prominent volcanic eruptions in US History took place in the state of Washington. Mount St. Helens had been dormant for almost 100 years before March 15th. On this day, two months before the eruption several small earthquakes shook the earth. This indicated a magma buildup below the surface, and the first minor event that would lead to one of the greatest eruptions the US has ever known. Following the first set of earthquakes, “Steam explosions blasted a 60- to 75-m (200- to 250-ft) wide crater through the volcano 's summit ice cap and covered the snow-clad southeast sector with dark ash. Within a week the crater had grown to about 400 m (1,300 ft) in diameter and two giant crack systems crossed the entire summit area. Eruptions occurred on average from
In March 18, 1880 Mount St. Helens there was a catastrophic eruption that caused a huge volume of ash; the ash plume would be over central Colorado within 16 hours. After years of dedicated monitoring (knowing where to volcano is, unlike an earthquake not knowing exactly where this geological even is exactly) there was been increasing accuracy in forecasting eruptions.
On May 22, 1915, an explosive eruption at Lassen Peak devastated nearby areas and rained volcanic ash farther 200 miles to the east! This explosion was the most powerful in a series of eruptions from 1914 through 1917. ...
These differences are in the makeup of the volcano, the impact on society, and the eruption itself. Mount Saint Helens, used to be a wonder of the world, but now a damage site of what happened on May 18, 1980. Mauna Loa is a tourist destination and one of the most active dispensers of lava and magma in the world. As shown, these volcanoes can’t be more different. Yet, each volcano has been a culprit to destruction, and have similarities within themselves. This report has expressed many similarities and differences and brought facts and knowledge to the historical eruptions by these impressive and ancient structures of
The first time I saw Mt. Rainier for myself, was last summer when my boyfriend and I drove to Washington. It was the most beautiful, peaceful looking mountain I have ever seen. However, underneath it's great beauty, it hides a deadly secret. Mt. Rainier is one of the most dangerous volcanoes that we have here in the United States. One of the reasons it is so dangerous is because of it's great beauty. People enjoy looking at it, and the area that surrounds it, so they have made their homes here. Mt Rainier is not the only volcano I am interested in, in fact this last summer I also went to Mt. St. Helens and Crater Lake. But it is the volcano I chose to research for this paper because it does have so much beauty and at the same time so much power. I already know the basics about volcanoes, how they form, the different types, etc., but I wanted to find out more about what would happen if this great volcano were to erupt, what type of eruption would it be, and how would it affect the people that live around it.
Boom! A once ice-capped mountain peak explodes as ash fills the air. “‘Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!’”Those were the last words of expert geologist David Johnston (Gunn 561). In 1980, Mount Saint Helens of the state of Washington erupted, filling the air with ash and causing mudflows powerful enough to lift tons. It decimated everything in its path. The eruptions, mudflows, and ash caused great damage on the landscape, yet it gave us information on how catastrophes happen and how they affect society and the surrounding landscape. The data acquired can also help us understand the way the landscape was formed. Mount Saint Helens caused much damage, but also helped people understand the science behind it.
Harris, Ann G., Esther Tuttle, and Sherwood D. Tuttle. "Katmai National Park and Preserve." Geology of National Parks. 4th ed. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Pub., 1990. 441-48. Print.
Mount St. Helens is an active stratovalcano in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located 96 miles south of Seattle and 53 miles northeast of Portland, Oregon. The mountain is part of the Cascade Range. It is most famous for a catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980. That eruption was the most deadly and economically destructive volcanic eruption in the history of the United States. 57 people were killed, and 200 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed. The eruption blew the top of the mountain off, reducing its summit from 9,677 feet to 8,364 feet in elevation and replacing it with a mile-wide horeshoeshaped crater.
Brigham, William Tufts, 1841-1926. The volcanoes of Kilauea and Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii: Their Variously Recorded History to the Present Time Bishop Museum Press, 1909.
Helens is located in Skamania County, Washington at a latitude and longitude 46°11′28″N 122°11′40″W. Mt. St. Helens is a stratovolcano volcano that has an elevation of 2,549m (8363 ft.). The last eruption was 36 years ago and has erupted numerous times within the last 100 years. The eruptions are explosive with ash and pyroclastic flows. Mt. Helens erupted on May 15, 1980 with a VEI 5 rating. It was the only large eruption to happen in the contiguous 48 states since 1915. Fifty-seven people were kill, along with several farm animals. Two hundred miles of land and trees were obliterated. This area is now called the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic
1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens and the 1991 eruption Mt. Pinatubo. (Ball, J. n.d.).
Mount Vesuvius is a strato-volcano consisting of a volcanic cone (Gran Cono) that was built within a summit caldera (Mount Somma). The Somma-Vesuvius complex has formed over the last 25,000 years by means of a sequence of eruptions of variable explosiveness, ranging from the quiet lava outpourings that characterized much of the latest activity (for example from 1881 to 1899 and from 1926 to 1930) to the explosive Plinian eruptions, including the one that destroyed Pompeii and killed thousands of people in 79 A.D. At least seven Plinian eruptions have been identified in
... released. When it finally does release, it is volatile and is very explosive. Mount Vesuvius is a composite, or strato-volcano, and is the reason it had such a large explosion. Other famous composite volcanoes include the following: Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount Shasta and Lassen in California, Mount Hood in Oregon, Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, and Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines. (Jeffrey Kluger) The final type of volcanic composition is cinder cone volcanoes. Cinder cone volcanoes are different from shield and composite volcanoes because cinder cone volcanoes only grow to about a thousand feet, and they usually erupt from many openings. Famous cinder cones include Paricutin in Mexico and the one that is in the middle of Crater Lake. Volcanoes, no matter how they may look or what type it is, can be very devastating when it erupts. (Jeffrey Kluger)