03-16-2008, 06:03 AM
Yes, I too appreciated that on site report!
I'm going to go ahead and say I do not literally believe in Pele, the female goddess, as the power behind the volcano. Which is funny perhaps in that I specialized in folklore and mythology when doing my work in English. But I was focused on the psychological symbolic content, not on animistic beliefs.
I mean no disrespect, however!
From what I can tell by my simple reading of the last major summit eruptions, there was always noticeable inflation beforehand so that they knew magma was coming into place. The gas, the seismicity, and the inflation. Here the seismicity is apparently not "harmonic" yet and the inflation isn't remarkable.
Even so, clearly the heat is shifting around, and I would not be surprised if we had a new summit eruption following on the heels of this new development. It seems to me that magma can arrive without much preamble, at which point the scientists can say all the signs are present. They are simply not present this morning.
Well, they may be, I haven't checked today's news yet.
Anyhow, that's my layman's view of why the rangers feel something coming, but the scientists can't commit. Scientists have to rely on their criteria being met; they are not in the business of prediction. Until there is measurable sign of magma under the surface puffing things out like a throbbing boil, it is just gas. Indigestion, not spewing. But for the rest of us, where there's indigestion, we know spewing may be just around the bend. [:p]
I'm going to go ahead and say I do not literally believe in Pele, the female goddess, as the power behind the volcano. Which is funny perhaps in that I specialized in folklore and mythology when doing my work in English. But I was focused on the psychological symbolic content, not on animistic beliefs.
I mean no disrespect, however!
From what I can tell by my simple reading of the last major summit eruptions, there was always noticeable inflation beforehand so that they knew magma was coming into place. The gas, the seismicity, and the inflation. Here the seismicity is apparently not "harmonic" yet and the inflation isn't remarkable.
Even so, clearly the heat is shifting around, and I would not be surprised if we had a new summit eruption following on the heels of this new development. It seems to me that magma can arrive without much preamble, at which point the scientists can say all the signs are present. They are simply not present this morning.
Well, they may be, I haven't checked today's news yet.
Anyhow, that's my layman's view of why the rangers feel something coming, but the scientists can't commit. Scientists have to rely on their criteria being met; they are not in the business of prediction. Until there is measurable sign of magma under the surface puffing things out like a throbbing boil, it is just gas. Indigestion, not spewing. But for the rest of us, where there's indigestion, we know spewing may be just around the bend. [:p]