Mt. St. Helens

I got a good view of Mt. St. Helens from the plane Friday (that's Mt.
Adams in the upper distance), and it reminded me that I hadn't said anything about this:

A massive fin-shaped slab of molten rock has recently been seen growing in the crater of Washington State's Mount St. Helens.

The feature is the seventh such structure to rise in the volcano's dome since it began slowly erupting in October 2004, say scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Cascade Volcano Observatory....

The newest creation currently stands about 330 feet (100 meters) tall and is 330 feet (100 meters) wide at the base, Dzurisin says.

The feature is growing at a rate of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) a day.

As I've mentioned before, catastrophic processes are the norm out here on the West Coast. Still, it's unusual to get such a vivid reminder of that. Mt. St. Helens is rebuilding itself, not in geological time but at a rate we can measure from day to day.

That is so cool.

[That's all, folks]