Mount Redoubt in Alaska is About to Erupt

Residents of Alaska are getting ready for a potential volcano. Mount Redoubt, a 10, 200 foot volcano that sits about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska is due to erupt. . We visited Moutn St. Helens a couple of summers ago. I saw the ravage an eruption could wreak. The fact more people were not killed then is a miracle. Sure they had notice it was going to erupt but geologists thought that Mount St. Helens would be erupting from the top like volcanoes usually do. It erupted from the side taking everyone by surprise.

Needless to say residents of Alaska are putting together their survival kits though having seen an eruption up close I would head for the hills! If you choose not to the best items to have on hand are goggles to protect your eyes and masks to protect your lungs.

Mount Spurr another volcano in Alaska erupted in 1992. Scientists can predict volcanoes much more accurately because volcanoes often show signs. Interestingly enough Mount St. Helens is still steaming.

The observatory that does this monitoring is a joint program between the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute, and the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. It was formed after Mount Augustine erupted in 1986.

You might remember form your science classes that magma, which is molten rock under the earth's crust, moves underneath a volcano before an eruption. This movement is what can cause an earthquakes. The mountain's surface swells and the amount of gases that are often coming out of mountains (as I mentioned when I talked about Mount St. Helens) increases. The gases can be looked at by scientists, the movement of the surface is watched carefully, and tools that measure earthquakes are used.

Not that long ago (November 2008) geologists saw that the gases had changed that were coming from Mount Redoubt and also there was some melting near the bottom of Mount Redoubt. Like our homeland security force geologists have threat levels. The threat level went from green to yellow to orange which is the color used right before and eruption. This happened just this past Sunday when the geologists saw a lot activity underneath the volcano.

If you've seen Hawaii's Haleakala which we did we saw red lava flowing out of the mountain. Alaska's volcanoes do not usually produce lava. They usually explode and put out ash that can be as high as 50,000 feet, which is nine miles! The ash isn't fine like you might expect. The explosion carries with it pieces of rock which can be even more deadly than ash which is not abrasive.

In 1989 Mount Redoubt erupted and blew ash 150 miles away right into a jet. Although the jet felt it and needed 80 million dollars in repairs thankfully there were no deaths. Now the observatory's first call after a volcano erupts is to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Source:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090130/ap_on_re_us/alaska_volcano