Mount Adams is one of the largest volcanoes in the Cascade Range, it is waybigger then any of the surrounding mountains.
Mount Adams has been less activeduring the past few thousand years than its neighboring mountains of St. Helens,Rainier, and Mt. Hood, it will erupt again. In the future the eruptions willprobably happen more often from vents on the summit and upper sides of MountAdams than from vents scattered in the volcanic fields beyond. Large landslidesand lahars that dont need to be related to eruptions probably will cause themost destructive, far-reaching hazard of Mount Adams.
Volcanoes create a varietyof geologic hazards during eruptions and when there isnt any eruptiveactivity. During most of its history Mount Adams has shown a limited range oferuptive styles only being lava flows, debris slides, and tephra falls. Veryexplosive eruptions have been rare. Compared to the large explosive eruptions atnearby Mount St. Helens during the past 20,000 years, the eruptions of MountAdams have been very mild.
Eruptions at Mount St. Helens have covered areas morethan 120 miles downwind with ash deposits several centimeters or inches thick,but those at Mount Adams have blanketed only areas a few miles away with a thesame thickness of ash. Even though theyre low levels of power and force,eruptions at Mount Adams are still very hazardous. More importantly even duringtimes of no eruptive activity, landslides of weakened rock that originate on thesteep upper sides of Mount Adams have been a dangerous common thing and they canstart lahars, which are watery flows of volcanic rocks and mud that surgedownstream like rapid flowing concrete. Lahars also known as mudflows or debrisflows and they can destroy and kill everything in the valley floors that theyrun down in to tens of miles from the volcano.
The most often occurring type oferuption that has happened at Mount Adams, as well as in the other volcanicareas, produces lava flows, or streams of molten rock. These and older lavaflows usualy traveled less than 12 miles from the vents, but in some eventslarger flows where as long as 15 to 30 miles. Typical lava flows on the lowersections of the mountain and other places in the volcanic fields spread out ontogentle slopes and funneled out into valleys. The moving flows were tens of feetto more than 100 feet thick and where made up of crusty lava blocks covering amore fluidish, liquid core. Their steep fronts moved very slowly at about onlyabout 330 feet per hour.
Thats much more slowly than people typically walk. Still, the lava flows will bury, crush, and burn all structures in their paths,and hot lava boulders coming off flows make it very dangers to on lookers andthe also will start forest fires. A normal eruption consists of one main singlelava flow over a period of days or weeks and even of a sequence of flows eruptedover weeks to a few years. Eruptions that keep happening over years to decadesbuild a broad apron of lava flows on a side of a mountain or even build aseparate small volcano several 1,000 feet 6 miles or more in diameter. There isa very large possibility of Mt.
Adams erupting again very soon because it hasbeen a long time since the last time it awoke. The people and businesses in thearea need to be aware and cautious of the risk they are in by living and workingnear the mountain like as it is with any other volcano. This mountain alsoprovides a great place for hiking, biking, skiing, and many other things thatwould be ruined if this mountain was to awake. It is a very scenic beautifulmountain that has the potential to do what Helens has done.Geography
