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What is the Source of the Continuous Oozing of Mount St. Helens? Scientists Puzzled

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The volcano that fell silent in 1986 is oozing lava every three seconds! And it is happening for more than a year now! This is no other than the active notorious Mount St. Helens. It is oozing lava into its crater at the rate of roughly a large dump truck load — 10 cubic yards. A steady drumfire of small earthquakes comes with the sticky molten rock.

U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dave Sherrod said Thursday in a telephone interview from the agency’s Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash, the movement of lava up through the southwest Washington volcano is “like a sticky piston trying to rise in a rusty cylinder.”

St. Helens’ violent eruption occurred on May 18, 1980. It blasted 3.7 billion cubic yards of ash and debris off the top of the mountain. Leaving a gaping crater in place of the perfect, snow-clad cone, fifty-seven people died in the blast. It had marked the original 9,677-foot peak. Now 8,325 feet, St. Helens rumbled for six more years. It extruded 97 million cubic yards of lava onto the crater floor in a series of 22 eruptions that built a 876-foot dome.

Via: Mercury News

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