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Magnificent Cascades Volcanoes Impress, Sometimes Worry, Geobloggers

At the risk of this blog becoming all volcanoes, all the time, I bring you... more volcanoes! Two of my favorite geobloggers wrote mustn't-miss posts on some of our Cascades volcanoes. They showcase the beauty and the danger we live with here in the Pacific Northwest. Anyone who lives near a bit of the earth that's prone to violently exploding knows the feels.

Mount St. Helens from the air.

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Image copyright Looking for Detachment. All rights reserved.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


At the risk of this blog becoming all volcanoes, all the time, I bring you... more volcanoes! Two of my favorite geobloggers wrote mustn't-miss posts on some of our Cascades volcanoes. They showcase the beauty and the danger we live with here in the Pacific Northwest. Anyone who lives near a bit of the earth that's prone to violently exploding knows the feels.

First up: Silver Fox took a trip over a portion of our local Ring of Fire, and brought back some pretty incredible shots of some of your favorites from the air. She showed them to me when we got together on her layover. I drooled. And now I am happy to pass them your way so that you, too, can drool.


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Here's Mount St. Helens:

Image shows Mount St. Helens from 30,000 or so feet. The whole image looks like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, everything basically varying shades of purple-gray. Mount St. Helens is a darker lump with a sliced-off top. You can see one of the forks of the Toutle River and Spirit Lake. The horizon vanishes in a haze.

Mount St. Helens from the air. Image courtesy Silver Fox.

There are so many more where those came from, including more Mount St. Helens! And no, it wasn't a foggy day. No, it hadn't just finished erupting - although this photo does remind me of some of the photos I've seen taken after her cataclysmic May 18th, 1980 eruption. It's just that we had about 5 billion fires going at once on the dry east side of the Cascades, and the whole state was pretty much covered in a pall of smoke and wood ash. It made for terrible visibility and difficult breathing, but some really haunting photos of our favorite explosive mountains!

And, because Cascades volcanoes are like potato chips and it's hard to stop at just one post about them, here is Garry Hayes talking about the hazards of the Cascadia subduction zone, it's volatile volcanoes, and their dangerous southern sister, Mount Shasta:

We had just spent weeks traveling through a region that could potentially be devastated by an entire buffet of disasters. And yet millions of people live there, either unaware or willing to take the chance in order to enjoy the amenities of living in a coastal paradise, or someplace incredibly green and scenic. I felt no sense of relief from getting out of that danger zone because I understood that any one of those disasters had a very small chance of taking place while I was there. Even if something had happened, we were stocked up and prepared to be on our own for upwards of a week or more. But the clock was ticking, and the longer one stays, the greater likelihood that something bad will happen.

When you go to that link, my loyal readers, you will immediately recognize the first photo. After you get done admiring it and the rest, you should probably read his whole Vagabonding on Dangerous Ground series, and then you can come back and ask me why the heck I live here. (Spoiler: cuz it's pretty.)

I'll have the next installment of our liveblogging of In the Path of Destruction up by the end of the week, so you'll all be getting plenty of hawt Cascades volcano action this month!