After the earthquake, we get volcano!

blacbird

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Mt. Redoubt, a 10,000+ elevation volcano 100 miles southwest of, and plainly visible from, Anchorage, is unhappy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28914322

Anchorage got ashed from Redoubt in 1989 (and then again from the slightly nearer Mt. Spurr in 1992), but have had nothing since then. Redoubt isn't close enough to be truly dangerous, but even small amounts of volcanic ash fall can be hazardous to breathe, especially for young children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems, like asthma (me) or emphysema. It's also bad for your car's respiratory system, and when Spurr went off, the town ran out of replacement auto air filters.

Stay tuned.

caw
 
Don

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blacbird said:
Mt. Redoubt, a 10,000+ elevation volcano 100 miles southwest of, and plainly visible from, Anchorage, is unhappy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28914322

Anchorage got ashed from Redoubt in 1989 (and then again from the slightly nearer Mt. Spurr in 1992), but have had nothing since then. Redoubt isn't close enough to be truly dangerous, but even small amounts of volcanic ash fall can be hazardous to breathe, especially for young children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems, like asthma (me) or emphysema. It's also bad for your car's respiratory system, and when Spurr went off, the town ran out of replacement auto air filters.

Stay tuned.

caw
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You're not downhill in the same watershed as Redoubt, I hope. I've seen some shows on lahars and pyroclastic flows that would make that seem to be a very unattractive position, no matter how far away.
 

blacbird

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Don said:
You're not downhill in the same watershed as Redoubt, I hope. I've seen some shows on lahars and pyroclastic flows that would make that seem to be a very unattractive position, no matter how far away.
Click to expand...

Nope. Redoubt is on the other side of Cook Inlet, and 100 miles away. There's an oil facility nearby that had some flooding problems in 1989, but basically, the thing is located in howling wilderness. But it is an isolated peak, very near the coast, and spectacularly visible from several small towns directly east across the inlet about 35 miles or so. Ash could be a pretty severe problem for those places. And we can see it clearly from Anchorage, too.

caw
 
Gary

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Redoubt was blowing when I was there in the winter of '66. Lots of smoke, but that was it. I also lived within 80 miles of St. Helens when it blew. That was impressive!
 

blacbird

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Redoubt is very unlikely to do a St. Helens. It blows fairly frequently, on a scale of 20 years or so, and isn't plumbed in such a way as to build up huge volumes of trapped magma and gas, the way St. Helens does. In general, the less frequently an explosive volcano blows, the more dangerous it is. The world's biggest recent eruption, Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, was about ten St. Helenses in terms of volume of ejected material. It erupts on a scale of 500 years or so.

One of the major dangers of Redoubt, however, is that it sits right on the major international flight path from Anchorage to the Far East. Volcanic ash is horrorshow bad for airplanes.

caw
 
Gary

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blacbird said:
One of the major dangers of Redoubt, however, is that it sits right on the major international flight path from Anchorage to the Far East. Volcanic ash is horrorshow bad for airplanes.

caw
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We flew out of Anchorage while Redoubt was still spewing ash and we had to skirt the cloud on the way out. At the time, no one was quite sure what the ash would do to an airplane.

When St. Helens blew, one of our AF Reserve rescue helicopters was immediately diverted to check the mountain for survivors. They flew through ash clouds all day, and when they returned to base that night, the intakes and turbine internals were polished to a high shine, but the engines ran perfectly all day. There was concern that ingesting heavy ash clouds would put the flame out, but it didn't happen.
 
GeorgeK

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Gary said:
We flew out ...while Redoubt was still spewing ash ....When St. Helens blew, ...
Click to expand...

So TWO volcanoes have spat at you and you are not a vulcanologist? Stay away from Yellowstone
;)
 
Duncan J Macdonald

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blacbird said:
Mt. Redoubt, a 10,000+ elevation volcano 100 miles southwest of, and plainly visible from, Anchorage, is unhappy:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28914322

Anchorage got ashed from Redoubt in 1989 (and then again from the slightly nearer Mt. Spurr in 1992), but have had nothing since then. Redoubt isn't close enough to be truly dangerous, but even small amounts of volcanic ash fall can be hazardous to breathe, especially for young children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems, like asthma (me) or emphysema. It's also bad for your car's respiratory system, and when Spurr went off, the town ran out of replacement auto air filters.

Stay tuned.

caw
Click to expand...
Look on the bright side -- it all goes right, we can knock down that pesky Global Warming thing.
 
billythrilly7th

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Why are humans living in Alaska?

Anything that happens up there is their fault for being there.

It's like earthlings saying "what planet you want to live on?"

"How about Jupiter?"

"It's not really hospitable. How about Mars?"

"Nah..let's go Jupiter."

And then dying ten seconds into the atmosphere.

Well?!

Duh!!

Alaska?

Seriously?

Thank you.
 
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