#I learned SO MUCH about Superfund that semester because my group focused on a local site

[epersonae]

🤖 for the ask game!

Mt Rainier (Tahoma) is the most heavily glaciated* mountain in the contiguous 48 states. While it's not in a lot of danger of a big eruption like Mt St Helens, it is known to have the potential for something called a lahar, where a hot spot near the surface melts the glacier, which combines with loose rock and mud to form a superheated avalanche-like flow. (There hasn't been one in a few thousand years, but it could happen. There is at least one town up close to the mountain that does lahar drills, including schoolkids.)

* this is a fact I learned circa 1995 in a class on "environmental and geological catastrophes", I assume it is still true even if glaciers have declined generally.

[send me an emoji and I will send you a fun* fact about my special interest(s)] *"fun" is kind of relative here tbh