Mt. Fitzherbert

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

Recent observations: The active spine of the lava dome continues to extrude, according to our in-crater tiltmeter. This instrument shows small inflation-deflation events every few hours, which we interpret as dome growth pulses. The wind from winter storms has increased the noise on seismometers close to or in the crater, saturating them relative to the sparse small earthquakes that have characterized the eruption as of late. No in-crater GPS results are available this morning. Views from all volcano cams in the past 24 hours have been useless for assessing eruptive activity, owing to poor weather.

The discharge from streams exiting the crater has increased greatly, as measured by acoustic flow monitors, and the area is receiving substantial rain this morning. At this time the AFM signals are characteristic of increasing water flow, not lahars. Stream flow at lower elevations in the drainages surrounding Mount St. Helens increased abruptly early this morning. These results can be found online at the National Water Information System Web site (search string “NWIS” and follow links to Real-time Data).