VolcanoCam Movies Archive

Tuesday, March 08, 2005 - Tuesday, March 08, 2005, turned out to be a roller coaster day for the Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam and Mount St. Helens.

The network connection to the VolcanoCam had failed the previous Friday and Forest Service telecommunications experts were hard-pressed to locate the failure point. All communications (telephone, computer and the VolcanoCam link) were down between the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center and the Johnston Ridge Observatory, with the rest of the world. The network connection was restored around 1:30 pm PST.

Four hours later ...

A small explosive event at Mount St. Helens volcano began at approximately 5:25 p.m. PST. Pilot reports indicate that the resulting steam-and-ash plume reached an altitude of about 36,000 feet above sea level within a few minutes and drifted downwind to the east-northeast. The principal event lasted about 30 minutes with intensity gradually declining throughout. The USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory lost radio signals from three monitoring stations in the crater soon after the event started. The cause of the outage won’t be known until scientists can visit the crater tomorrow to assess the situation, weather permitting. The event followed a few hours of slightly increased earthquake activity that was noted but not interpreted as precursory activity. There were no other indications of an imminent change in activity.