THREE SISTERS, OREGON, INFORMATION STATEMENT (First Earthquake Swarm at Uplift Area Near Volcano)

USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory ^ | March 24, 2004

[John H K]

At approximately 10 a.m. yesterday (Tuesday, March 23), an ongoing swarm of small earthquakes began in the Three Sisters volcanic center in the central Oregon Cascade Range. This activity poses no immediate threat to the public. As of this morning, the regional seismic network has detected approximately 100 earthquakes ranging in magnitude up to about 1.5. The rate of earthquakes peaked late yesterday and appears to be declining slowly. The earthquakes are occurring in the northeast part of an area centered 5 kilometers (3 miles) west of South Sister volcano in which the ground has been uplifted by as much as 25 cm (about 10 inches) since late 1997. On the basis of multiple lines of evidence, scientists infer that the cause of the uplift is the continuing intrusion of a modest volume of magma (molten rock). The magma appears to be accumulating at a depth of about 7 kilometers (4 miles) below the ground surface and now measures about 40 million cubic meters (about 50 million cubic yards) in volume. Until yesterday, only a few earthquakes have accompanied this process, but scientists have expected that swarms of small earthquakes such as the present one would eventually accompany the uplift. The most likely cause of the earthquakes is small amounts of slippage on faults as the Earth’s crust adjusts to the slow ground deformation of the past 7 years. Heat and gases related to the magmatic intrusion have probably caused increases in fluid pressure deep underground, which also helps to trigger minor faulting events.

The processes that have been causing the uplift over the past seven years could eventually lead to shallower intrusion of magma or even to a volcanic eruption; however, both are unlikely without significantly more intense precursory activity. Scientists continue to monitor the situation closely and to evaluate data from field instruments.

Today scientists are deploying another seismometer in order to locate earthquakes more precisely. With the assistance of the Willamette and Deschutes National Forests, additional fieldwork over the next week will fix problems with some field instruments that resulted from the heavy winter snow-pack and will assess sites for new instruments.

Additional information, including maps and a volcanic-hazards assessment, may be found on the Internet at Web at URL:

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Sisters/framework.html and

http://www.pnsn.org/SISTERS/welcome.html

[John H K]

This is the sort of thing that FR rarely misses, so I was astonished that there appears to be no post on it....stumbled across news of it on USEnet.

This was 6 days ago, and there have been no quakes at all since the 25th.

It's interesting, as there has basically been no EQ activity at the South Sister uplift since it was discovered, but I hope this doesn't turn into another hypefest of misinformation like Yellowstone....doing a quick web search it seems the science kooks and the religious apocalyptics haven't gotten their teeth into this one.

This was a small, very weak swarm...heck, the Long Valley Caldera back when it was acting nutty 4-5 years ago would crank out this many quakes in a MINUTE.

And it could easily have a swarm like this once a week for the next 20 years without erupting.

[Crazieman]

Art Bell and George Noory are all over Yellowstone. Now I'm hearing that, "If Yellowstone explodes, it'll cause a damage radius of 1,000 miles".

*snorts*

[John H K]

Well, that's technically true if the entire Yellowstone caldera erupts, but the odds of that are amazingly low.

The basic problem with Yellowstone is people not recognizing that for a supercaldera, there's a lot in between "dormant" and "catacylsmic eruption." There's not the slightest scrap of evidence suggesting a caldera eruption is imminent; a big caldera can have geysers getting hotter or cooler or forming new geyers, or small earthquakes, or small cinder cone or phreatic eruptions, for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS without erupting.

And people confuse the bulge in the lake erupting with the entire CALDERA erupting, which are two entirely separate issues. And there's no evidence the bulge is even about to erupt.

[Alia]

In that time frame, I was getting reports of smaller rumbles in the Los Angeles area.