Thursday, April 2, 2009

Changes to the Piedmont Lobe of Drift River Glacier Since the Onset of These Eruptions

This pair of images (17681 & 17680) is from the time-lapse camera located at Dumbell Hills. The view is toward the west-southwest of the upper Drift River Valley and piedmont lobe of Drift Glacier. The top image shows the condition prior to the onset of magmatic eruption at Redoubt volcano that began at 22:38 AKDT on 3/22/09. Note the frozen stream channel (on right) bends to the right (i.e. is fed from the terminal end of Drift Glacier during times of flow. The bottom image shows the aftermath of massive flooding down the Drift River following the five eruptive events that occurred during the time between the two images. Fresh snow covers the lahar debris south (left) of the active channel; the flood flow was bank to bank.

Picture Date: April 01, 2009

Image Creator: McGimsey, Game

Image courtesy of AVO/USGS.

4 comments:

Ishmael said...

Oh. My. God! Are you telling me that a volcano can melt snow and ice? This is just madness.

Just kidding. Washing away an oil storage facility is serious. Crazy that it's there in the first place, but serious nonetheless.

Unknown said...

i love science. combined with technology, it's WAY cooler.

i saw they are mostly emptying the tanks now. of course, they'll leave more than one million gallons in each. so... quick math... HOLY CRAP! that's still a lot of petroleum products. great.

Mount Redoubt Volcano News said...

Volcanoes are very disruptive.

sauerkraut said...

word veri: oyvei

no, seriously.

Amazing what havoc the power of mother nature can wreak.

Almost as much as yur guv, but mother nature... well, she's not one to fool.