Alaska braces for possible volcanic eruption

From ABC News

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A restless volcano near Alaska's most populated region is being watched by scientist and officials, who warned on Thursday of the risk of clouds of ash and a tsunami from a possible eruption.

If Augustine does erupt, that could result in grounded flights, school closures and even evacuations, officials said. It is also possible that there will be a landslide from the volcano into the waters of Cook Inlet, causing a tsunami, they said.

Such an event occurred in 1883, when a wave believed to be 20 feet high hit the Native Alutiiq village of Nanwalek, 50 miles east of Augustine.

Looks like she's waking up.

I wouldn't be all that surprised were she to wake up especially with all those earthquakes Alaska has had these past few days. Of course with those earthquakes they're probably affecting the volcano.

Yes, indeed. As I mentioned some days again (see volcano thread: ATS Augustine volcano , all these quakes we have been watching in Alaska, the increase in activity, possibly means the volcano is starting to prepare a New Year´s present.

I would even say that the quakes could be caused by the volcanic activity itself, they could be magmatic...
Let´s see what happens next.

magma happens..
All the time..It's just Alaska's turn..

Of course, and Alaska is one of the more volcanicaly active regions on this planet. There are roughly 90 volcanoes in Alaska, so the chances of an eruption are pretty good from time to time.

Does anyone know if an eruption might be as powerful as the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption or have the past ones only been little ones? I was wondering if scientists are only talking about small potatoes here and a slight inconvenience to people in the area or a possible major eruption.

Originally posted by orionthehunter
Does anyone know if an eruption might be as powerful as the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption or have the past ones only been little ones? I was wondering if scientists are only talking about small potatoes here and a slight inconvenience to people in the area or a possible major eruption.

The 1980 eruption was pretty small potatoes itself. Compared to the Mt Pinatubo eruption in the '90's, or the Tambora eruption of 1815, Mt St Helens was a small belch. Tambora expelled so much ash that it affected the climate of the northern hemisphere - the next year was known as 'The Year Without A Summer', as crops failed all over the place, snow fell in Britain in May (I need to check that bit) and people died of cold all over Europe and North America.

If I'm not mistaken--and someone please correct me if I'm wrong--but isn't it almost impossible to tell if an eruption is going to be massive or not? I mean, with St. Helens rumbling in the past year or so, no one could say for sure most of the time whether it was going to blow it's top like in '80 or if it was just letting off a bit of steam. I'm sure there's some indicators that are somewhat reliable, but for the most part we don't really know enough to say it's going to be big or not, right?

Originally posted by orionthehunter
Does anyone know if an eruption might be as powerful as the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption or have the past ones only been little ones? I was wondering if scientists are only talking about small potatoes here and a slight inconvenience to people in the area or a possible major eruption.

We're talking small potatoes. Mt. St. Helens is also small potatoes.

For a real, globe-changing, unimaginably huge volcanic event, look up the Siberian Traps. This supervolcano spewed lava for upwards of a million years, and the outflow of this monster would have covered the entire United States in lava.

dsc.discovery.com...

I posted a thread about this a few weeks ago, www.abovetopsecret.com... , yet nobody noticed...

Oh yeah and by the way she just blew.....