On September 19-20, a very dense swarm of small earthquakes in the 2.0 range occurred on the southern slope of the huge Rainier stratovolcano in Washington state, which seems to continue there to this day.
Attention is drawn to the small, sometimes even negative depth of seismic events, indicating the movement of magma in the mountain itself.
The localization of the swarm, which is not typical for Rainier, also attracts attention:
As can be seen from the figure of the 2012 sample, earlier the swarms were observed mainly from the north side of the crater, but now they, for some reason, migrated to the south.
Finally, the beginning of the Mount Rainier swarm chronologically coincided with the unusual hydrothermal activity of Yellowstone Volcano, which is the younger, possibly even Big older brother of the Yellowstone, which put the USGS on its ears.
The origin of Rainier remains a mystery to geologists and, like all the Cascade Mountains, is traditionally considered the product of the subduction of the giant Farallon oceanic plate, sunk in the mantle under North America. As a result of its dissolution, a fragment of the Farallon plate - the Juan de Fuca plate, sticking out from under the continent, remained, as well as very small lithospheric plates: the Explorer's plate and the Gorda plate. Crawling on top of each other and sinking in magma, these three fragments create the volcanism of the Cascade Mountains.
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However, in the summer of 2017, geologists from the University of Rhode Island and the United States Geological Survey, studying the seismic waves moving under the state of Washington, to their great surprise, found that the waves below the Cascade Mountains were slowing down dramatically, which made them think about the presence of fragments below them. plates, and lakes of magma:
Deciding to test this assumption and taking the issue more seriously, geologists tried to create a three-dimensional model of this hypothetical lake. But, to their repeated great surprise, the lake was not a lake, but a sea with an approximate volume of 12,800 cubic kilometers, which is approximately 2.5 times the volume of Lake Michigan.
Thus, according to the researchers, there are relatively small magma chambers under each volcano of the Cascade Mountains, which are fed by one large sea of magma, the branches from which stretch the entire length of the Cascade Mountains, that is, for 1,100 kilometers and reach California itself. And since the sea of magma cannot exist by itself, then under it, most likely, there is a previously unknown mantle plume, which, by its movement, formed the Cascade Mountains:
This entire great article was published in Nature on November 22, 2017.
And on June 22, 2018, another, probably no less remarkable article was published that tells about a gentleman named Charles Pretlow - a pastor from Seattle, who in the period 2012-2014. attended a prophetic vision of the eruption of Mount Rainier, which turned Washington State into a sea of lava and ash. According to the pastor, before Rainier ejects the first plume, there will be an eruption in Hawaii, which, in fact, has already happened.
Therefore, based on the visions of Pastor Charles Pretlow, supported by the tenets of the geological faith of the journal Nature and other scientific truths, the observed incomprehensible swarm of the Rainier stratovolcano is somewhat alarming. Can Rainier wake up?
We do not yet know the answer to this question, but we are following the development of events.