Mount St. Helens Clears Throat; Entire County Refreshes USGS Page
By The Thunderbird · Weather & Tremors ·
AMBOY — Mount St. Helens produced a brief, routine seismic murmur early Wednesday, an event the U.S. Geological Survey classified as “well within normal background levels” and Clark County classified as a reason to refresh the USGS monitoring page 1.4 million times before lunch.
The agency stressed that small swarms are ordinary for the volcano and indicate nothing. The word “nothing,” residents observed, is exactly what it would indicate right up until it didn’t.
“I’m not saying anything is happening,” said a Yacolt man restocking a garage shelf of water jugs. “I’m saying the bags stay by the door. That’s just where the bags live.”
The mountain issued no further comment, which several residents agreed was somehow worse.
This desk’s correspondent filed a single distant boom, transcribed here in full.