10/15 UPDATE: Mount St. Helens continues it's slow eruption. Magma is oozing out of cone, but slowly. A live pic from Mount St. Helens is posted below along with links to live video feed.

10/08 UPDATE: Scientist preparing for major eruption that could rival 1980 event!

10/05 UPDATE: Another day, another eruption. Live video feed of the USFS Mount St. Helens cam here. A real time image of the Mount St. Helens volcano is below.

10/04 UPDATE: She's erupting again!!! Live video links, live images, and information below.

10/02 UPDATE: New eruption imminent, USGS raises alert level to 'red'.

News reports indicate that Mt. Saint Helens has started to erupt. I have been posting about this for days, not really believing it would happen. Well, I was wrong! My previous post has been updated daily and is located here. For your convenience, I have reposted it in the extended entry below. Thanks for Digger for notifying me. He's also on the case. UPDATES BELOW

Below is a real time image:

Whoa!! Check out that pic above from Fox News. Awesome! And by awesome I mean I am truly awestruck by the pics, not Spicolli awesome. The pic below is from the Seattle Post Inetlligencer via M.H. King. It's from earlier and only shows the steam

Click here for live video provided by KGW-TV/DT Portland & KING-TV/DT Seattle. You'll have to sit through a commercial before the video starts, but give it a second (link also via M.H. King).

Duane the Forester is pretty close to the volcano and he's liveblogging it. If you can't wait, he reports "At 40 miles away I didn't feel anything rumbling, sorry but this is one of those cases where MSM has an advantage. The ash is headed my way, however so if we get ashfall here I'll photoblog the event."

KGW-TV/DT Portland reports that there were three large bursts, than the eruuption tapered off. No lava in site. Ash and steam from the eruption have caused several flights to be cancelled out of Portland and Seattle.

UPDATE 4:30 EDT: Watching USGS press conference. Eruption at 12:03 PST--lasted 24 minutes, plume went to 10,000 ft. They report no lava flow. Some glacier melt being detected and elevated waterflow. No mudslides detected. The USGS guy says that there have been half a dozen of these types of eruptions since the last big one. The difference between this eruption and those other small eruptions is that the seismic activity was way larger this time. In fact, the seismic action (those are earthquakes folks) this time is GREATER than the big blow. However, experts still don't expect as large an eruption this time. Yeah, this is the inner geek coming out in me.

New favorite quote from Duane who is liveblogging this thing from ground zero: "John Kerry calls it the "wrong eruption at the wrong place at the wrong time"

One expert is now claiming that he is noticing mud flow coming down the mountain.

Mount St. Helens Live Webcam Here. Very Cool. (site down due to volume)

John Little is also covering this and has some good resources linked in this post which he has been updating. Rob at Say Anything also covering with some cool pics. Daily Recycler has some online news footage, but the link to the live feed above is to a Portland station live covering it and they have some excellent close-up footage. Crazy Gator also has some wicked cool pics. Brian B. is blogging from Eugene and says he might get some of the ash. James Joyner finds an updated story on my earlier report of the morons flocking to Mount St. Helens as tourists. I didn't know Scott was an expat from the area--I guess NY takes in all sorts. UPDATE 9/30: 70% Chance of Eruption

UPDATE 9/29 Scientists Predict Small or Moderate Eruption at Mount St. Helens in Next Few Days From the article: Mount St. Helgns began rumbling more intensely Wednesday, prompting scientists to warn that a small or moderate eruption could happen in the next few days.

Earthquakes ranging from magnitude 2 to 2.8 were coming about four times a minute, possibly weakening the lava dome in the crater of the 8,364-foot mountain, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Whoa!! This is going to get interesting.

UPDATE 9/28: File under dumbasses. Shaking on Mount St. Helens attracting tourists

CASTLE ROCK, Wash. -- The rumbling at Mount St. Helens is drawing tourist interest back to the volcano.

Mike Moss said sales doubled last weekend at his espresso stand at the Silver Lake visitors' center.

I was young enough when Mount St. Helens blew the first time that the concept of surreal hadn't quite sunk in. I do remember seeing pictures of the volcano erupting and thinking how cool it would be to see it up close and personal. Now, the prospect of being anywhere near it doesn't seem so nice. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument has a photo gallery of the last time she blew.

Terra Daily:

Mount St. Helens, a volcano that devastated swathes of the US northwest when it erupted 24 years ago, has rumbled back to life, raising fears of a fresh explosion, seismologists said Monday.

Experts believe that a sudden and potentially dangerous event could be on the way after a wave of nearly 100 small earthquakes began hitting the area in the states of Washington and Oregon in recent days.

"We have had small swarm of earthquakes that begun last Thursday and are worried that a small explosion may occur without warning," said Peter Frenzen, a scientist from Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

"The earthquake activity is occurring below the dome -- all this could increase the likelihood of small rock slides from the lava dome," he said, adding that the mountain had not been hit by waves of quakes since 2001.

Trails up the mountain were closed to climbers and hikers after quakes measuring between two and to 2.8 on the Richter Scale shook the area amid fears of mud and rock slides over an eight kilometer (five mile) area around the peak.

The area north of the peak was hard hit in the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens that left 57 people dead, devastating hundreds of square kilometers (miles) and spewing ash over much of the Pacific Northwest region.

The mountain's top lies around 88 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of the Oregon's main city of Portland, which was also covered in a thick layer of ash in the 1980 eruption.

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