Redoubts rumblings have increased their average amplitude again

[HereSince1628]

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I saw that this morning on the AVO website,

the first thing I check every day, even before coming here. I'm wondering if Redoubt is really going to blow or just be the "volcano that cried wolf." We're hardly paying attention to it anymore.

Here's some interesting reading, though, since you're a volcano watcher. http://www.themudflats.net/2009/02/12/chevrons-oil-between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea/

"Chevron's Oil - Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"

<snip>

Today, on the shores of Cook Inlet, a body of water which lies on the other side of the Chugach Mountains from Prince William Sound, there is a tank farm owned by Chevron. This tank farm consists of seven tanks, each one capable of holding 270,000 barrels of oil. That’s more than 11 million gallons total. This tank farm sits next to the Drift River which feeds into the Inlet. And it also sits at the base of Mt. Redoubt, which happens to be an active volcano that is currently at “orange alert” meaning it will likely erupt sometime soon.

The last time Mt. Redoubt erupted, the searing heat caused the glacier on its north face to melt, sending at its peak of flood 60,000 cubic meters of water per second rushing past the tank farm, a volume comparable to the output of the Mississippi River, only boiling hot. What might happen this time? With things like volcanoes, one can never be sure.

But we have been burned before by not being prepared. Now, in Prince William Sound, we only allow double hulled tankers, containment booms are at the ready. So, when we see a potential problem in the making, like lots of oil sitting between the volcano and the deep blue sea, we want to know how much oil is actually in these tanks, what precautions Chevron is taking to make sure we don’t have an environmental disaster on our hands, what equipment is available, and what Chevron plans to do if the worst happens. We need to know this in part because Cook Inlet is home to important salmon fisheries, halibut, and endangered beluga whales. Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, sits on its shores, and it reaches the coastal communities of Kodiak, Homer, Seldovia and many others.

<snip>

[HereSince1628]

4. St Helen's dragged out beyond most people's patience as well.

The rumbling over the past few weeks has double in intensity. The AVO staff admit this is well above historic background, but don't seem especially concerned...yet.

[tridim]

2. Maybe it's just me, but I have no idea what that graph shows.

Redoubts?

[HereSince1628]

3. Redoubt is an Alaskan volcano a couple hundred miles from Anchorage

but a couple of hundred miles is not far enough to protect Anchorage from the ash that will be produced in what looks to be an eruption in the next few weeks.

The graph itself is the average amplitude of shaking at a seismic station located near a few miles from the summit. Over the past weeks the baseline rumbling has doubled in its intensity, today, as shown at the right of the graph, the amplitude of the shaking has spiked again.

[tridim]

5. Got it, thanks.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. Here's a photo of Redoubt not erupting that I took last week

from Point Woronzof in Anchorage