Mount Saint Helens: Why A Lateral Blast?
Monday, May 31, 2010 - 23:21
in Paleontology & Archaeology
In light of the fact that it is the thirtieth anniversary of the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens, I thought it would be interesting to take a retrospective look at what happened and why it happened. For years geologists didn't understand what processes led to the formation of what is known as a cryptodome on the northern face of Mount Saint Helens and the inevitable lateral blast that resulted from it. In time it became apparent that the key to unlocking this mystery lay in the combination of the gases associated with stratovolcanoes, water, the rock that made up the mountain and the chemical reactions between all of these components. read more