Mt. Fitzherbert

Potential ash hazards: Wind forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), coupled with eruption models, show that ash clouds that rise above the crater rim would drift to the northeast today.

Recent observations: No significant changes in the level or type of activity at the mountain have been noted since yesterday’s update. The time between “drumbeat” events has become slightly less regular over the last week, but average seismic energy levels remain unchanged. Pictures from the USFS web camera at the Johnston Ridge Observatory this morning are uniformly gray. Snow has been falling in the crater and vicinity, resulting in several minutes-to-hours-long dropouts in radio signals from several monitoring stations overnight. Weather forecasts call for more snow today at the volcano, with little hope of any significant breaks over the next week. It has been 4 weeks since our last good look inside the crater, the longest gap between observations since the eruption started in 2004.