October 01, 2004
Volcanoes
I got the breaking news alert from ABCNews.com today at 3:28 p.m.: Steam Seen Erupting From Mount St. Helens.
I’ve been watching the impending signs of eruption carefully all week, particularly given my four-month odyssey through Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” which has convinced me that we’ll all die soon in a spectacular explosion of one kind or another.
In fact, I’ve watched several gathering signs of the apocalypse closely this week, including the earthquakes in California, the asteroid narrowly missing Earth, and then—my peak fascination right now—volcanoes. Bryson’s book is excellent for the way that it boils down science to a scale that non-scientists can understand and remember (For instance, plate tectonics are pushing North America and Europe apart at roughly the same speed as a fingernail grows).
Over the past two weeks, as I’ve wound through the end of the book, I’ve learned all about the geology beneath us that at some point will wipe out life in North America as we know it. Mount St. Helens is a tiny volcano as those go. Yellowstone, on the other hand, is one of about 30 giant supervolcanoes on Earth—and about the only one on land. Scientists long knew it was volcanic—hence all the geysers and hot springs—but had been puzzled because they couldn’t find the caldera anywhere in the Park. It wasn’t until satellite photographs did they realize that the entire park was a giant caldera, dwarfing all previous known land volcanoes. Yellowstone explodes regularly about every 600,000 years, and when it erupts it does so with the power of a pile of TNT the size of Rhode Island eight miles high. The last eruption buried Nebraska (which, as you might notice, isn’t particularly close to Yellowstone) in 67 FEET of ash.
It was 620,000 years since the last eruption, meaning that we’re long overdue for one. Could Mount St. Helens be a harbinger of what’s to come?
You better go have a good meal or steal a fanny glance while you still can.
