Why Mount Rainier is the US volcano keeping scientists up at night | Hacker News Reader

Why Mount Rainier is the US volcano keeping scientists up at night

cnn.com

59 pointsamichail12 comments

> The snowcapped peak of Mount Rainier, which towers 4.3 kilometers (2.7 miles) above sea level in Washington state, has not produced a significant volcanic eruption in the past 1,000 years.

Is it possible that other nearby eruptions (St Helens) are releasing the pressure that would otherwise cause an eruption at Rainier?

Not in the last 1000 years, no, but - they do mention they think there have been 11 Lahar events originating from Ranier that have impacted the seattle area, over the past 6000 years - one of which doesn’t even seem to be associated with a volcanic eruption.

At first I was like “why worry about Ranier when Hood is active” but - yeah the mother of all flash-floods is a horrifying prospect.

Different volcano, but back in the 50's the natural tephra damn on the crater lake of Mount Ruapehu (New Zealand) collapsed triggering a lahar, that ultimately took out the piers of rail bridge near Tangiwai minutes before a passenger train tragically attempted to cross the bridge, resulting in mass casualty's.

So certainly possible for non-expulsive activities to trigger a lahar and for consequences that sound like they are more from a disaster movie then real life to occur.

How hard would it be to keep the thing drained at all times?

You'll need to melt away the glaciers. Feasible? I am afraid not.

I don't think so, as they have separate magma chambers AFAICT, although Mt St Helens does look like it shares its magma chamber with other nearby volcanoes.

Would be interesting getting a text that pure destruction is approaching at 4 m/s and will reach your location in 30 minutes.

Not sure what I would do. Wrap my car with metal, and hope for the best?

Just throw some water and essentials in the car and drive in the other direction and don't insulate your car. 4 m/s is like 15 km/h - you can out drive it easily.

Somewhat important to note that if everyone does this it will likely overwhelm the roads and end up in gridlock

Yeah that’s what I was thinking, in which case what do you build to maximize survival in the mean time? Floating fluffy pods or something

a bicycle. throw a bicycle in a bike rack on your car. when you hit gridlock, bike further out.

I feel like the really scary prospect is the lager causing a dam failure. I’ve read a few articles from NYT talking about the potential for atmospheric rivers to overwhelm dams in california, causing a cascading collapse. From memory, the potential casualties are incredibly grim (like hydrogen bomb grim). I honestly don’t know what can be reasonably done though. The possibly range is too wide and the timeline too long.

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