by Bell206freak » Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:29 am
I'm thinking about sending that guy a nice note of constructive criticism to perhaps improve the accuracy of his scenery. While I enjoyed the ability to fly around the volcano in full eruption, the lava needs a slight bit of mentioning.
It's not too accurate. For one, Mt. St. Helens has never in its 4,500 year history had an eruption like Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. The magmatic gases and magma composition are completely different. In Hawaii, magma (or lava as its called on the surface) is gas-poor. By that, it means there's no hyrogen sulfide gas compounds in enough quantities to create an explosive eruption. Here in the Northwest, however, the magma's gas levels are rich in hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, thus the explosivity of the May 18th 1980 eruption, or each of the successive smaller eruptions Mt. St. Helens emitted during the course of the early 1980s.
It's for that reason that the fluid lava most often found in Hawaii - the type that shoots skywards in columns hundreds of feet high and flows for miles downslope, is never found here. Mt. St. Helens' eruptions over the last 4,500 years, and especially in recent times, have consisted of ash and tephra rich explosions, with ash columns shooting up several thousands of feet or several miles skyward.
And the scenery with the trees right up to the north flank's base (LAGO FSE files).. I recently visited the mountain via a helicopter flight over the crater in early October during a steam eruption. (It was the basis for my creation of the Hoffstadt Bluffs scenery and the short steam blast scenery in the crater). The landscape just north of the volcano is still very much barren - even 25 years after the devastating May 18th 1980 blast. In a swath seven miles from the crater extending to the extreme NW (to Coldwater Ridge) and east of Spirit Lake to Windy Ridge, there is still no tree growth occurring. Between Spirit Lake itself and the volcano, the landscape is so barren that it still looks like the volcano erupted just yesterday. Only in places further north, I.E. leeward sides of ridges facing away from the volcano, and places around 10-15 miles away are experiencing natural regrowth. 20-year replanted forests outskirt the original blast zone and the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument Boundary.
Inside that boundary, nature will take 100 years to repair the damage, and will take at least 150 years for forest growth to start occurring again directly north of the volcano.
lemoncat