Is Mt. Rainier Volcano in Washington State Experiencing Tornillos? (I hope not)

a reply to: TrueAmerican

endoftheamericandream.com...

The Most Dangerous Mountain In The United States: What Would Happen If Mt. Rainier Erupted?
By Michael Snyder, on June 28th, 2015

Most people don’t even know what “lahars” are, but they can be exceedingly deadly. Just imagine a tsunami of super-heated mud that is hundreds of feet thick traveling at highway speeds. In fact, scientists believe that Mount Rainier is capable of producing massive lahars that could move at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour…

Heat from an eruption will melt ice and glaciers on the mountain and turn them into mudslides moving up to 50 mph, with the potential to be more than 400 feet deep in nearby valleys. Rainier has had a history of lahars, ranging from more than 5,600 years ago to only 500 years ago.

The largest of these debris flows – the Osceola Mudflow – occurred 5,600 years ago, covered 212 square miles of land from Rainier to Kent and was hundreds of feet deep.

The cities near Mount Rainier have early warning systems, but the truth is that once a lahar is unleashed it would be necessary to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from the region in less than an hour. Does anyone actually believe that would be possible? Here is how one author described the danger that residents could potentially be facing…

The numerous towns and cities that occupy the surrounding valley would all be at risk for not only severe destruction, but complete annihilation. Residents of cities like Orting, Sumner, Buckley, and Enumclaw are estimated to have no more than 30 minutes before the lahar, speeding down from the many rivers that flow from Mount Rainier, buries their homes and businesses beneath as much as 30 feet of mud and debris. Even the larger cities like Auburn, Puyallup, and Tacoma itself are not safe. Auburn and Puyallup, with nearly 80,000 residents between them, would be covered in 20 feet of mud in less than an hour, and Tacoma, at almost 200,000, is estimated to be hit with nearly 10 feet from the lahar.

If Mount Rainier were to experience a full-blown eruption today, it would likely be the worst natural disaster in U.S. history up to this point by far. And scientists tell us that such an event is inevitable…

The nature of this impending and INEVITABLE tsunami is, this isn’t just water flowing, this is giant boulders, whole houses, a million huge trees, cars, ships, people, cows, we saw this in Japan recently, all smashing along relentlessly and not ending in a minute or an hour, but going on and on and on, piling into narrow bays and pinned in by high hillsides…this makes the tsunamis WORSE, not safer!

The Puget Sound bay is not that deep. So the resulting multiple high flood events pouring into several parts of the Puget Sound will cause a huge wave to jump ahead of the flood and the bulky mess of debris pouring in will displace more water and it will flood huge areas that are at sea level and even, like in Japan, make huge waves smashing up hillsides, wiping out everything, tearing down trees, rocks and buildings.

Once this wave of destruction hits, no one will be able to save others because it will go on and on and on for several hours at least.

old.seattletimes.com...

tornillo? sounds delicious.

Hope it's not going to erupt.
I'm wondering if the screw shape is indicative of blasting, fracking or nuclear testing? I forget what shapes they have, except they are unlike seismic and I thought they were similar to these screws as in they suddenly stop as opposed to tapering off where they spike mid way.

Not sure I explained that well or intelligently. I'm tired

a reply to: violet

I'd have to say no, not similar to any of those, because I know blasting signatures from east of Yellowstone- see those all the time. I've seen nuke signatures in a few articles. Nope, not similar. And Lord forbid some numbnut is fracking on top of Rainier. I seriously doubt it- and even if they were, these signatures are not that either. I've seen sonic booms near Long Valley... Nope. These signatures bear the closest resemblance to tornillos, unfortunately- just in my opinion.

Considering that the heat has carved out caves under the summit, it might be possible this could be some kind of gas or steam moving through those caves since they are shallow (relative to the summit peak). And I already suspect the higher frequency signatures to be shallow, so that might corroborate this possibility a bit. But what about the other signatures?

And if it IS gas or steam moving through those caves, enough to cause tornillo signatures to show up, then could this mean there is increased heat coming from below, possibly where the deeper signatures are seen? I don't know.

But all in all, I seem to sense an increase in events there lately from watching live seismic data. They are more frequent. Some of those events are a source of controversy- with the PNSN claiming they are glacier movements. I'm not so sure- especially now in light of this. I've been pretty leery of that ice cap causing masking of seismic events since day one.

Very timely with this thread. I've been considering moving to Oregon recently. I totally understand that NO ONE can predict an eruption. But if these tremors are a precursor, do you have any ballpark as to how soon after the 'big bang' comes?

It would be just my luck to move there and immediately have to evacuate due to a natural disaster! Lmao!

Tornillos? I was just at Taco Bell and didn't see anything new on the menu....

originally posted by: ladyvalkyrie
Very timely with this thread. I've been considering moving to Oregon recently. I totally understand that NO ONE can predict an eruption. But if these tremors are a precursor, do you have any ballpark as to how soon after the 'big bang' comes?

It would be just my luck to move there and immediately have to evacuate due to a natural disaster! Lmao!

Although Oregon and the rest of the west coast has a long line of volcanoes, you have nothing to fear from Mt. Rainier, if you live in Oregon.

Mt. Rainier is in Washington. It is the largest of the Cascade chain. It got that way because it had time to build its cone.
I can see the top of Rainier from certain locations in Vancouver, WA, which is 2+ hours south of the volcano on the Oregon border. That's how big it is - it towers above the Cascades.

Oregon is a big state. It takes 6 hours to cross north-south. The west coast winds flow west to east. If the volcano blows, Oregon wouldn't be heavily impacted except by evacuees.

There seems to have been an increase in seismic activity all around the Ring of Fire lately. Hopefully, this is just a side effect of that and our volcanoes will just sleep a bit less peacefully, but sleep they will. However, the US NW has been too quiet compared to everywhere else, hasn't it?

a reply to: collietta

Thank you! I know a little bit about the geography up there. I know Ranier is in Washington, but I was thinking about the Astoria area of Oregon, which is more northern. I also know Ranier is a HUGE mo fo and I know how much extensive damage was done when St. Helen's blew.

Like I said, it would just be my luck to move there and then something like that happens!

I live in Vancouver WA, so Seattle keep all your damn ash to yourselves.

A real shallow 1.6 quake just hit at the summit peak of Rainier. Depth of less than 1 km.

But that is rated in Duration Magnitude, so it may get revised up a bit into a Richter, or local magnitude. Looks more like a 1.8 to 2.0 to me. And there were a few more fidgets after it too. Somethin's brewin.

earthquake.usgs.gov...

ETA: Yup, they just revised it up to 1.9 ML, right in line with what I said above.

Op, thanks for the info.

originally posted by: collietta

originally posted by: ladyvalkyrie
Very timely with this thread. I've been considering moving to Oregon recently. I totally understand that NO ONE can predict an eruption. But if these tremors are a precursor, do you have any ballpark as to how soon after the 'big bang' comes?

It would be just my luck to move there and immediately have to evacuate due to a natural disaster! Lmao!

Although Oregon and the rest of the west coast has a long line of volcanoes, you have nothing to fear from Mt. Rainier, if you live in Oregon.

Mt. Rainier is in Washington. It is the largest of the Cascade chain. It got that way because it had time to build its cone.
I can see the top of Rainier from certain locations in Vancouver, WA, which is 2+ hours south of the volcano on the Oregon border. That's how big it is - it towers above the Cascades.

Oregon is a big state. It takes 6 hours to cross north-south. The west coast winds flow west to east. If the volcano blows, Oregon wouldn't be heavily impacted except by evacuees.

I'm guessing the fallout, for example, would nearly mirror Mt. St. Helen's ash fallout- one map..

a reply to: TrueAmerican

Nice catch on the spikes, and hopefully someone will get back to you after the holiday weekend. I haven't spent a lot of time studying this area, as you have, but I've been paying attention to posts like this for a while, and have had the feeling something in the NW might "go off" sometime soon. No idea why, just a feeling. Please keep us posted.

originally posted by: wildb
I googled tornillos, did not get far, please tell us what they are..

Its like a sharknado but with armadillos.

originally posted by: TrueAmerican
A real shallow 1.6 quake just hit at the summit peak of Rainier. Depth of less than 1 km.

I did not know volcanoes could have quakes on their peaks. I thought the quakes happened lower where the plates and magma are located.

Are summit quakes normal cone building for strato volcanoes? Have you seen this before in other areas of the world? A quake that high makes me think magma is pushing on the weight of the rock and glacier.

a reply to: collietta

It could also be glacial activity if they're high enough up, but that could also be caused by heat activity from rising magma or by changes in the ground profile underneath.

a reply to: ketsuko

I forgot about glacier settling. The glacier movement makes sense and will probably be the official explanation for the summit quake.

But combined with the tornillo quake, it does make the mind go to dark places.

originally posted by: TrueAmerican
I have checked on the PNSN blog, and I see nothing about this. I have first hand experience watching tornillos in seismic data occur at Little Sitkin volcano in Alaska some time ago when there were several hundred of them- so I have an idea of what they look like in the data, both in waveform and on spectrograph.

Good luck figuring this one out...

I checked some other sites on tornillos (notably THIS one) and I don't think the pattern you posted was a tornillo. The decay on a tornillo tends to be very long and seismoidal. The ones you posted appear to be short.

a reply to: TrueAmerican

A Native saying is when little sister speaks, grandfather answers. This refers to Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Ranier. So as we had eruption at one you might now suspect based on anecdotal evidence that there may be a corresponding eruption of the other.

a reply to: Byrd

Then perhaps you might take a look at this document I found that lays out 13 different types of tornillos from Galeras:
www.geo.mtu.edu...

Some things to note when looking at that doc:
1) Lowest duration is 22 seconds, so mine would qualify for the most part.
2) Those are oldschool, drum type prints, so wherever you see curved vertical lines, especially at the beginning of the tornillos, those now appear straight vertical with modern waveforms like I have posted. Keep that in mind when you compare signatures. You will see that my signatures are pretty close to at least two that I saw.

But the biggest issue is that all volcanic systems are different. And thus they yield different signatures. It is possible we could be looking at an entirely new signature created from very shallow pressures near the peak in the cave system.

Rainier needs to be watched closely, especially after that last shallow 1.9 near the summit.

If I had to argue against myself, I would say:
1) the predominant frequency isn't low enough-
But I can counter that with well, but this could be a new type of hybrid signature created by rainier's own particular geology.

2) They don't show up at the same time at nearby stations like STAR-
counter- it could be a very localized signature only being detected at RCS. Star is over 5 km away, and RCM is down (3 km away), so we can't see that data. Plus, it is no secret that things like low level tremor can be very localized at volcanoes, to where other stations 5 km away can't pick them up.

3) It could be telemetry error-
counter- yes, it could, but then why were those two events marked as "other" ? huh?

There are no good answers here. It is a mystery in my mind. And that last shallow 1.9 at .9 km depth has definitely got me on the lookout.