Images

From February 1 to June 17, 2024, approximately 350 earthquakes were located at Mount St. Helens by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. Over 95% of the earthquakes were less than a magnitude 1.0 and too small to be felt at the surface. The number of earthquakes located per week appears to have reached a peak in early June, at 38 events per week. USGS graphic.

Comparison of February-June 2024 seismicity to previous seismic swarms (1987-2004). Upper left: Map of Mount St. Helens with a grayscale representing a digital elevation model. Earthquakes interpreted as recharge between 1987 and 2004 are plotted as a heatmap of earthquake density.

Earthquakes located at Mount St. Helens from 2008-2024, a non-eruptive period. This activity is consistent with normal, background levels. Top: Earthquake events located per week. The orange color at the far right denotes earthquakes from February to June 2024. Bottom: Earthquake depths below sea level (bsl) in kilometers.

Aerial photo of Mount St. Helens (center), with Mount Hood (in the distance, far left), Spirit Lake (on left with floating log mat), and St. Helens Lake with a little ice cover (lower left). USGS image taken by K. Spicer on June 6, 2024. 

Mount St. Helens: Land of Transformation video shows the changes to the landscape from before the May 18, 1980 eruption to today (2024).

During the March 21, 2024 lahar evacuation drills, thousands of students walked to the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup, Washington to practice evacuating from a lahar generated by Mount Rainier. A lahar, or volcanic mudflow, could reach this area in about 3 hours.

Maciej Obryk staff profile photo. Research Hydrologist with the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory.

Mount Hood, Oregon, earthquakes from a swarm that occurred December 8-13, 2023 as compared to previous earthquakes. The recent earthquakes are shown with red circles. Earthquakes that have occurred since 2010 are shown as unfilled gray circles. All circles are sized by their magnitude. Top: Map view of seismicity at Mount Hood.

USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory field crew conducts maintenance at station LSON at Mount Hood (in the distance). LSON was one of three new stations installed at Mount Hood in 2020, to create a more robust monitoring network at this volcano. Photo taken September 14, 2021 by B. Pauk.

Mount St. Helens by A. Mosbrucker. Looking SE towards the volcano up the valley. 

Mount Rainier (Washington) volcano hazard zones and estimated lahar (volcanic mudflow) arrival times for the Puyallup and Nisqually River valleys.

Close-up oblique views of Mount Rainier’s west side showing simulated lahar flow depths from a landslide originating in the area of the Tahoma Glacier Headwall (T-260-HM simulation). Imagery appears blurry where lahar material is absent because D-Claw’s adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) employs very coarse resolution in those areas.

Time series showing daily vertical GPS positions from the continuous GPS station HUSB between 2001 and 2022.

Comparison of vertical GPS motion measured at station HUSB (top) with earthquake depth (bottom). Red line is a 60-day average of the cleaned GPS time series plotted in gray. Earthquakes are plotted with respect to their magnitudes. The swarm in 2004 represents the vast majority of earthquake in the vicinity of the deforming region.

Satellite radar interferogram spanning June 19, 2020, to August 13, 2021, and showing the ground motion in the direction of the satellite.

USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory Physical Science Technician Brian Meyers installs a data telemetry antenna on a volcano monitoring station at Mount St. Helens. A DOAS scanner is mounted above the flat-panel antenna at the top of the mast.

Washington State Governor Proclaims May 2021 as Volcano Awareness Month.

Heavy rains at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano (Hawaii) cleared on the afternoon of Friday, February 26, 2021, to show the steaming surface of the lava lake at Halema‘uma‘u viewed from the west.

A seismologist with the Cascades Volcano Observatory checks the data output on a newly installed monitoring station at Mount Rainier.

Seismic and infrasound station PARA, installed October 6-8, 2020 at Mount Rainier.

A geophysicist from the Cascades Volcano Observatory notes the location of a newly buried seismometer at station PARA, on Mount Rainier.