Hi all. I live in Seattle and it's true that we did have ONE day that reached 90 degrees last week and the rest have been in the 80's, nothing particularly unusual for this time of year. If anything, this summer has been cooler than last year. Last week there were several days where the freezing level was about 14,000' and it was around 50 degrees at Camp Muir several days. Plenty warm enough to have alot of melting, particularly on the southwest side of the mountain where the sun beats down most of the day and the Kautz glacier is located.

I was just watching the news and they said that they have some geologists that have gone up in a helicopter to survey the exact location of the outburst and to get a birds eye view of what's going on. They hadn't reported back yet as of about 10 min. ago and they thought they may be having problems with the fog. I imagine as the day goes on and it burns off, they will get some video footage of it and that should be interesting to see.

Meanwhile, I guess this was a good wake-up call for the officials that are located near the mountain. I guess one of the mudflow sensors was tripped last night but no sirens went off because the outburst went down the Nisqually and not the Puyallup or Carbon River. I guess it put alot of people on alert last night. I personally wouldn't live in Orting but love to visit Ranier any chance I get. Can you imagine waking up at 11pm to the sounds of sirens and not being able to see what's going on and knowing you don't have much time to get your act together and get outta that valley? No thanks :-)