Word: magma
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...seven years since Mount St. Helens exploded in a spume of gas, ash and pumice, there have been 24 additional eruptions at the volatile peak in the Cascade Range. The last, a small explosive belch of magma that added 85 ft. to the height of the lava dome inside the crater, occurred eight months ago. As a result, the U.S. Forest Service, cautious guardian of the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, has decided to let the general public have a closer look at a postvolcanic environment. Since early May, some 100 climbers a day have been...
...terrestrial turmoil came in 1975, when Mount Baker, a 10,750-ft. volcanic peak in northwestern Washington, began to puff and fume. Vented steam has continued to melt ice around the summit crater of the mountain, which is only 90 miles from Seattle. The Geological Survey says that rising magma in the mountain's cone may be stoking Mount Baker's internal fires. Magma is hot, melted rock from deep within the earth that fuels volcanoes and becomes visible as lava when it breaks through the crust...
...rise of magma is often accompanied by swarms of small local earthquakes. Such tremors, which enable scientists to estimate how close to the surface the magma may be, have been felt at Mount Hood in neighboring Oregon and at Mount Shasta in Northern California as well as Mount St. Helens. In addition, the USGS study notes that since 1982 earthquakes have shaken California's Coso Range, a volcanic region west of Death Valley; Yellowstone National Park, which is famed for its hot springs and geysers, notably Old Faithful; and Mammoth Lakes, a popular California ski resort near the Nevada...
...effort to divert the magma, Italy's minister of civil protection summoned a team of volcanologists. The strategy: to redirect the lava from its southward path into a wide hollow, away from inhabited areas. The specialists hoped that spreading the lava would speed its cooling, and thus slow the momentum of the flow. The diversion required the removal of a 25-ft. section in a 328-ft.-long natural wall of old lava, and was to be accomplished by precision blasting...
...shallowest quakes were originating at a depth of about 3 miles. By last summer, they were occurring only 2 miles below the surface. Roy Bailey, coordinator of the U.S.G.S.'s volcanic hazards program, suggests that the quakes were caused by the slow upward movement of a tongue of magma-the hot molten rock that forms a volcano's lava. Still another sign: the outbreak of new steam vents, or fumaroles, in the seismically active region...