Experts Predict Mount St. Helens Eruption

Yahoo! News - Experts Predict Mount St. Helens Eruption Excerpt:

SEATTLE - The flurry of earthquakes at Mount St. Helens intensified further Thursday, and one scientist put the chance of a small eruption happening in the next few days at 70 percent. Jeff Wynn, chief scientist at the U.S. Geologic Survey's Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., said tiny quakes were happening three or four times a minute. Larger quakes, with magnitudes of 3 to 3.3, were happening every three or four minutes, he said. New measurements show the 975-foot lava dome in the volcano's crater has moved 2 1/2 inches to the north since Monday, Wynn said. "Imagine taking a 1,000-foot-high pile of rocks and moving it 2 1/2 inches. For a geologist, that's a lot of energy," Wynn said. Wynn estimated there was a 70 percent chance the activity will result in an eruption. Scientists did not expect anything like the mountain's devastating eruption in 1980, which killed 57 people and coated towns 250 miles away with ash. On Wednesday, they warned that a small or moderate blast from the southwest Washington mountain could spew ash and rock as far as three miles from the 8,364-foot peak....