Pretty But Dangerous

A possible Yellowstone supervolcano eruption gets all the apocalyptic speculation, but for West Coast residents the more likely dangers lie closer to home. [bold added]

(Photo from AGT, a Mt. Shasta CPA firm)

There is a serious volcanic threat in the contiguous U.S., but it isn’t in Wyoming. It lurks hundreds of miles to the west, inside the snow-capped, picture-postcard peaks of Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta, Mount Hood and others. They might look like ordinary mountains, but in fact they are volcanoes—and potentially dangerous ones....

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which erupted last year, ranked as the [USGS'] No. 1 “very high threat.” Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano and five Alaskan volcanoes were also in that category. Of the 18 U.S. volcanoes designated as “very high threat,” the other 11 are situated in California, Oregon and Washington. Washington’s Mount Rainier, near Seattle, which has erupted dozens of times in the past 10,000 years, ranked No. 3; California’s Mount Shasta, which last erupted about two centuries ago, ranked No. 5; Oregon’s Mount Hood ranked No. 6. Yellowstone, by contrast, was ranked No. 21, and didn’t make it into the “very high threat” category.

A Tufts paper states that models based on the Mount St. Helens (1980) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991) volcanic events predict that a Mt. Shasta eruption would "destroy" the nearby towns of Dunsmuir, Weed, Mt. Shasta, and McCloud, which have a combined population of under 10,000 people. The nearest city, Redding, has a population of 92,000 and is likely to be placed on high alert.

Mt. Shasta is 300 miles from the SF Peninsula, so Foster City residents don't have to fear the direct effects of an eruption. Now I can go back to the usual worrying about earthquakes and flooding.....say, did you hear that the Yellowstone super-volcano would bury the country in ash?