Alaska’s Mount Redoubt southwest of Anchorage is still jumping, with flood waters roaring into nearby watercourses as its hot ash fall melts snow and ice. Wired Science‘s Betsy Mason wrote it entirely as captions to some of the dramatic photos that the USGS’s Alaska Volcano Observatory released – including the one reproduced here showing an ash-flooded valley after a volcanically melted glacier’s liquefied remains roared through. The Anchorage Daily News‘s Richard Mauers reports that dikes protecting a downstream Chevron terminal, evacuated but containing 6 million gallons of crude, held back – but not by much – the Drift River as the volcano’s outpourings raised it 25 feet. The AP followed with news that an environmental group worries that, with more eruptions near-certain, the terminal could still suffer damage and perhaps a spill. Best and easiest quote here: “It makes no sense to store oil at the base of an erupting volcano.”
Plus, as proof that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer still lives despite its shuttered presses – columnist Joel Connelly writes in the on line-only edition today, Don’t sneer at science — volcano monitoring saves lives. Yes, the name Bobby Jindal is in the lede. The column is a welcome come-uppance to politicians who cherry pick funny sounding project titles from federal science grants for thick headed laughs about wasted tax money. A longer analysis of Alaskan politics and federal money, featuring a long discourse on the object lesson from Vulcan, is at the New York Times blog The Lede by Katharine Q. Seelye.
Grist for the Mill: USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory including an image gallery ;
-CP
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