Scientists fear Washington’s Mount Rainier could trigger a swift debris flow caused by melting snow and ice. An event could endanger nearby populated areas.
The snowcapped peak of Mount Rainier, which towers 4.3 kilometers above sea level in Washington state, has not produced a significant volcanic eruption in the past 1,000 years. Yet, more than Hawaii’s bubbling lava fields or Yellowstone’s sprawling supervolcano, it’s Mount Rainier that has many US volcanologists worried. “Mount Rainier keeps me up at night because it poses such a great threat to the surrounding communities.
“Should it be the same size, then it’s 10 minutes to the nearest places where people are living, and 60 minutes to the nearest large communities. And those are really short time frames,” he added. A 2022 study modeled two worst-case scenarios. In the first simulation, a 260 million-cubic-meter, 4-meter deep lahar would originate on the west side of Mount Rainier.
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