Ascending to 14,410 feet above sea level, Mount Rainier stands prominant and dominant as an icon in the Washington landscape. An active volcano, Mount Rainier is the most glaciated peak in the contiguous United States, spawning six major rivers. Subalpine wildflower meadows ring the icy volcano while ancient forest cloaks Mount Rainier’s lower slopes.
On clear days it dominates the southeastern horizon in most of the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, as seen here from Seattle's Space Needle.
The most recent recorded volcanic eruption occurred between 1820 and 1854, but many eyewitnesses reported eruptive activity in 1858, 1870, 1879, 1882 and 1894 as well.
Although Mount Rainier is now dormant, Seismic monitors have been located in Mount Rainier National Park and on the mountain itself to monitor activity since 2016. An eruption could be deadly for all living within the immediate vicinity of the volcano and an eruption would also likely cause trouble from Vancouver, Canada to San Francisco, California because of the massive amounts of ash blasting out of the volcano into the atmosphere.
Mount Rainier is currently listed as a Decade Volcano, or one of the 16 volcanoes with the greatest likelihood of causing great loss of life and property if eruptive activity resumes. If Mt. Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its May 18, 1980 eruption, the effect would be cumulatively greater, because of the far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens, the much more densely populated areas surrounding Rainier, and because Mt Rainier is a much bigger volcano, almost twice the size of St. Helens.
1/500 sec, at f/11 ISO 800
Canon EOS 5D Mark III with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens at 200mm
I hope you enjoy today's J.W. Remington Photographics' Photo of the Day iifor September 4, 2017!
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