48°49'51.45"N 121°36'10.50"W
Today I visited Mt. Shuksan in Washington State. The Cascade Mountain Range goes throughout the west coast. It gives people the perfect place to go skiing or snowboarding! There are nearly 20 volcanoes and many other volcanic vents around them. Most of these volcanoes are less than 2 million years old and some of the peaks are only 100,000 years old! The two tallest volcanoes are Mt. Shasta and Mt. Rainer. Mt. Rainer is 14,411 feet and Mt. Shasta is 14,179 feet. The Cascade mountains are a subduction boundary. A subduction boundary is when two plates collide and the denser one (usually an oceanic plate) goes under the other plate. The denser plate gets heated up and then sends the hot melted rock (magma) up and it launches out of volcanoes. In this case, the Juan de Fuca plate and North American plate collided and the Juan de Fuca plate went under.
The most recent major volcanic eruption was in 1980 when Mt. Saint Helens erupted. It sent out huge amounts of ash into the air in Washington. After the eruption, it caused two months of high earthquake activity, and the eruption blew off the top of the mountain! Hopefully no volcanoes erupt again any time soon!
Well that's all for today! Bye!
Nice blog, Will!
ReplyDeleteThere's so many great pictures and the posts jam-packed with science facts!