SEATTLE – – This Sunday marked 45 years since Mount Saint Helens broke out in Washington. The destructive and fatal outbreak brought even more attention to the monitoring of the volcanic activities throughout the state.
Scientists have recently been looking for more details like Mt. Adams and added more devices in the middle of the increasing seismic activities at the end of 2024. This year the state officials began updating the volcanic eruption reaction plan.
Today our meteorologist Abby Acone sat down with Dr. Harold Tobin with the Pacific northwestern seismic network. He tells us about the landscape of volcanic activity, surveillance and outbreak threats in Washington.
According to Dr. Tobin was the outbreak of 1980 on Mt. Helens, in which 57 people were killed, a “real water catchment area event with regard to the monitoring of the cascade volcanoes”. A survivor spoke to Fox 13 about remembering his escape from Mount St. Helens.
What's next:
We have Dr. Tobin asked how much of a heads-up we could expect in the present to break out one of the volcanoes in Washington.
“I can tell you that if the volcano started to become active, we would certainly see some signs of unrest. Now I cannot tell you whether it would take two months, as it was in 1980 or two weeks … or even only hours to days. But we would certainly see some advanced activities.”
How are Washington Volcano monitored in 2025?
Surveillance technology has significantly improved in the USA in the USA in the USA in Mt. Helens in the most destructive volcanic eruption.
Today, scientists can monitor invisible gases that are emitted by volcanoes, evaluate satellite images from space and use more remote monitoring stations on the volcanoes themselves in order to recognize the magmabe movement.
Dr. Tobin says we now have seismic monitors in every volcano of the state, from one or two to a dozen stations at every location.
Are we completely sufficient? I would like to see Mount Baker. Mount Adams and Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, everyone who was monitored at an even higher level than today, so that we can really understand what happens in the guts of the volcano, “said Dr. Tobin.
Which WA volcano will probably break out next?
Scientists like Dr. Tobin believe that it will be Mt. St. Helens himself that the next step is to break out in Washington. It has remained active and had smaller eruptiv activity in 2004 and 2007. He continued and said that activity has actually been increased in the past a decades or two, but that does not mean that it will break out or something that is now afraid.
In 1980, a large volcanic outbreak occurred in Mount St. Helens, a volcano in the state of Washington. (Photo by: Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) ()
They deeper:
A more dangerous result would be an outbreak on Mount Rainier. In a recent study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), more than 90,000 people will live in the Lahar danger zones of the volcano. The infrastructures caused by heated ISECAPS lead to massive damage to the infrastructure and possibly affect millions of people in the region, according to USGS.
In a scenario of no-notice Lahar, scientists say with USGS that tens of thousands of residents have only a 10-minute warning to evacuate. In response to this threat and after Mt. Helens eruption, several agencies in all of Washington created a Lahar warning system for the Carbon River Valley and the Puyallup Valley. It has been operational since 1998.
The source: The information in this story comes from the United States Geological Survey, Dr. Harold Tobin and Original Fox 13 interviews.
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