Is an eruption of one or more of the major volcanoes in the northwest United States imminent? In recent days, very large earthquake swarms have been reported at Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens. It is certainly not unusual for each of these volcanoes to experience earthquake swarms from time to time, but right now we are seeing this happen at all three volcanoes simultaneously, and this comes at a time when seismic activity along the Ring of Fire is on the rise all over the planet. If you have followed my work for a while, then you probably already know that I have been consistently warning that an eruption of Mt. Rainier is coming, and of course Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens are exceedingly dangerous volcanoes as well. If any one of the three were to erupt on a massive scale, it would instantly become the biggest news story of the year.

Mt. St. Helens

Many of my older readers remember the devastating eruption of Mt. St. Helens back in 1980 very well. This volcano is probably not as dangerous as Mt. Hood, and it is definitely not as dangerous as Mt. Rainier, but a full-blown eruption could still do an immense amount of damage to nearby communities.

Over the past couple of months, there has been a very disturbing series of earthquakes at Mt. St. Helens, and just within the last 30 days there has been a total of 103 quakes. In this article, I am going to share with you a series of maps that come from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network via Google Earth. On this first map, you can see that the earthquake swarm that has been striking Mt. St. Helens in recent days is centered right at the core of the volcano...

Scientists tell us that the reason for all of this activity at Mt. St. Helens is because the magma chamber is likely recharging...

Multiple small earthquakes beneath the surface of Mount St. Helens the past two months suggest it may be recharging magma.

These tiny quakes which started March 14 have been happening at a depth of two and seven kilometers — or 1.2 to four miles beneath the surface. Over the last eight weeks, there have been over 130 earthquakes formally located by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network and many more too small to be located, says USGS.

The small earthquakes beneath the surface may suggest Mount St. Helens is recharging magma.The magma chamber is likely imparting its own stresses on the crust around and above it as the system slowly recharges. The pressure drives fluids through cracks, producing the small quakes, per USGS.

Mt. Hood



Mount Hood is located only about 50 miles away from Portland, Oregon, and it is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in America. Over the past 30 days, there have been 96 earthquakes at Mt. Hood, and most of them have been centered on the south side of the mountain. Why this is so alarming is because it was also the south side of Mt. St. Helens that violently exploded back in 1980.

Here is a map which shows the recent activity at Mt. Hood...


According to Wired, the majority of the earthquakes that are happening are at a depth of between 3 and 5 kilometers, and this could be a sign that magma is ascending...

Right now, the earthquake swarm at Mt. Hood is centered just to the south of the main edifice (see below) and most of the earthquakes are between 3 and 5 kilometers below the surface. This is likely the zone where magma is being staged as it ascends from its source.

Mount Rainier



There haven't been quite as many earthquakes at Mt. Rainier over the past 30 days - only 37 - but without a doubt it is potentially more dangerous than either Mt. Hood or Mt. St. Helens because it sits so close to major population centers. On the map below, you can see that the recent earthquake activity at Mt. Rainier has been centered directly along the core of the volcano...

For a long time, I have been warning about the apocalyptic consequences that a major eruption of Mt. Rainier would have. For example, here is an excerpt from one of my previous articles...

Mt. Rainier has been dubbed a "time bomb", "the most dangerous mountain in the United States" and "one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world" because it sits so close to Seattle, Tacoma and other major cities along the coast of Washington state. In the event of a full-blown eruption, countless numbers of people would literally be buried alive in a tsunami of super-heated mud. These tsunamis of super-heated mud are known as "lahars", and scientists believe that Mt. Rainier is capable of producing lahars that could move at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. I am so convinced that an eruption of Mt. Rainier is in our future that I even put one in my novel.

My wife and I once lived out near Seattle for about a year, and we know very well that Mt. Rainier looms in the distance as an ever-present reminder of the major disaster that is coming someday. In the photo below, you can see how this extremely dangerous volcano is clearly visible from the central part of Seattle...

It is hard to even describe the death and destruction that we could potentially witness during a full-blown eruption of Mt. Rainier. According to Wikipedia, super-heated mud from Mt. Rainier could potentially even "destroy parts of downtown Seattle"...

If Mt. Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its May 18, 1980, eruption, the effect would be cumulatively greater, because of the far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens[33] and the vastly more heavily populated areas surrounding Rainier.[38] Lahars from Rainier pose the most risk to life and property,[39] as many communities lie atop older lahar deposits. According to the United States Geological Survey(USGS), about 150,000 people live on top of old lahar deposits of Rainier.[8] Not only is there much ice atop the volcano, the volcano is also slowly being weakened by hydrothermal activity. According to Geoff Clayton, a geologist with a Washington State Geology firm, RH2 Engineering, a repeat of the Osceola mudflow would destroy Enumclaw, Orting, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup,Sumner and all of Renton.[32] Such a mudflow might also reach down the Duwamish estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle, and cause tsunamis in Puget Sound and Lake Washington.[40] Rainier is also capable of producingpyroclastic flows and expelling lava.

Scientists assure us that someday Mt. Rainier will experience another massive eruption, and it will be an apocalyptic event unlike anything the northwest United States has ever experienced before. Let us just hope and pray that we have a lot more time until that happens, because nobody should ever want to witness death and destruction on that scale.

Unfortunately, the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and the west coast of our country sits directly along the Ring of Fire. It is only a matter of time until a major seismic event strikes, and it may be a lot sooner than a lot of people think.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/major-eruption-imminent-earthquake-swarms-reported-at-mt-hood-mt-rainier-and-mt-st-helens

These 3 volcanos are significant. Compared to the Caldera below Yellowstone National Park, they are not. The size of the super volcano mouth is 34miles by 40miles. Or 72 by 55 kilometers. It's explosive power is 2500 times bigger than the Mt.St. Helens eruption 36 years ago today. It last erupted 640,000 years ago. Two previous eruption markers show that we are 128,000 years overdue. When the caldera blows it will be a planet killer. The ash it will erupt from its multiple ejection ports, belived to be a minumum of 5, would cover the planet in a cloud for up to 5 years. Within 1 year all vegetation on the planet would perish. By the 2nd year of this nuclear winter, 80 % of life will be extinguished. The next 3 years will be a form of ice age.

So anybody know what the caldera is doing tonight? Buuuuhhaaaaawwwwaaaww!

everything you said is correct, cept for the 128,000 years... it's last eruption was 640,000 years ago, which puts at the time now, plus or minus 50,000 years

Thanks, gonna check the usgs site for activity at Yellowstone.

Yup there are minor quakes all over the caldera. Here's the link:

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/yellowstone_monitoring_47.html

* I remember in Calgary with the Mt.St. Helens eruption.

* The dust was everywhere and it even got past car engine filters. A
lot of vehicles would not operate and had the engines rebuilt.

* The inconvenience England had moving flights to and from N.America, around the Icelandic volcano. The dust damages jets engines quickly.


** With tools and power people can survive almost any disaster.
** The loss of power would shut-down our known society.


*** It is nice that our society has now moved into the area of preventive research and longer term survivability. Just a few years ago no one thought or noticed "world or Earth" risks.

[Over the past 30 days, there have been 96 earthquakes at Mt. Hood, and most of them have been centered on the south side of the mountain. Why this is so alarming is because it was also the south side of Mt. St. Helens that violently exploded back in 1980.]

I cannot see why particular sides of the mountains are of any more alarm than their names both having a capital 'H'.

Ring Of Fire!
And not the one Johnny Cash was singing about!



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire

The Ring of Fire is a major area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. In a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements. It has 452 volcanoes (more than 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes).[1] The Ring of Fire is sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt.

About 90%[2] of the world's earthquakes and 81%[3] of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismically active region (5–6% of earthquakes and 17% of the world's largest earthquakes) is the Alpide belt, which extends from Java to the northern Atlantic Ocean via the Himalayas and southern Europe.[4][5]

All but 3 of the world's 25 largest volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire.[6]

The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics/ movement and collisions of lithospheric plates.[7] The eastern section of the ring is the result of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate being subducted beneath the westward moving South American Plate. The Cocos Plate is being subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate, in Central America. A portion of the Pacific Plate along with the small Juan de Fuca Plate are being subducted beneath the North American Plate. Along the northern portion, the northwestward-moving Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the Aleutian Islands arc. Farther west, the Pacific plate is being subducted along the Kamchatka Peninsula arcs on south past Japan. The southern portion is more complex, with a number of smaller tectonic plates in collision with the Pacific plate from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, Tonga, and New Zealand; this portion excludes Australia, since it lies in the center of its tectonic plate. Indonesia lies between the Ring of Fire along the northeastern islands adjacent to and including New Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south and west from Sumatra, Java, Bali, Flores, and Timor. The famous and very active San Andreas Fault zone of California is a transform fault which offsets a portion of the East Pacific Rise under southwestern United States and Mexico. The motion of the fault generates numerous small earthquakes, at multiple times a day, most of which are too small to be felt.[8][9] The active Queen Charlotte Fault on the west coast of the Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada, has generated three large earthquakes during the 20th century: a magnitude 7 event in 1929; a magnitude 8.1 in 1949 (Canada's largest recorded earthquake); and a magnitude 7.4 in 1970.[10]

never really hear about earthquakes/volcanoes in Canada...

[never really hear about earthquakes/volcanoes in Canada...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Canada

Some really big ones

yea, conrads post mentioned a few... i just never remembered hearing about any of them... even the earthquake reports always show Alaska and Washington, even for the minor ones, but never Canada...huh...

there's always some form of doom on the horizon...didn't most of this seismic activity begin after the one huge quake in Peru? the whole planet shifted something like 2 degrees from the axis...I'm not positive on that simply going from memory...recall Peru and a significant shift...there's been quakes in odd places since...we had a small one here in Pennsylvania not so long ago, which was bizarre...the planet is long past due on a lot of unpleasant events...been nice knowing you guys lol

the doom and gloom patrol has been around for a long while, that's not anything new... but the fact is, earthquakes, volcanoes, and any other natural disaster is going to happen, with or without the doom and gloom patrol... but the do make profits off it, so it's more of an "advertising" commercial nowadays... but either way, there' nothing we can do about any of it, and it will happen whether we are ready or not...

I enjoy the stories of the individuals who would predict the world's end they'd be wrong then the mobs would burn 'em at the stake! it's every year now there's some prediction... so I made that last post moe and got curious then looked up earthquakes and the effect on the earth's axis and what occurs thereafter...yeah don't do that..not pleasant

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/23degrees/2011/03/can_an_earthquake_shift_the_ea.html

so if they are thinking that 4 meter movement changed the rotation, whats going to happen when all the ice melts from the poles?

yeah definitely an interesting subject although a tad frightening... read some things on the wobble that's occurring... makes me think of "the hum" phenomena that some think is emanating from the core. certainly appears that there's a fairly substantial increase in activity...

You may be on to something there 37kO. The spin of the planet has beens slowing down since it's been in motion. If the core of our planet is molten nickel an Iron, and it slows down.. using the logic of induction motors. We would slow to a woble, electro magnetic fields could swap, and then a pole shift. Which would cause the core to stall, effectively halting our spin. Removing the protective field that repulses 95% of solar radiation. Possibility of being stuck in eternal day or night, while our orbit diminishes without the earth spin? That is if the violent earthquakes and volcanoes don't finish off the whole enchilada.

The good side to all this is to remember the term science. It is an educated guess. Science does not have all the answers. Guess we'll just have to wait and see. Planet Earth is our spaceship. It's not like we have any earth-mechanics. All we can do as scientist is observe and make note.