Well, now that we're in mid-July, Eruptions will be going on autopilot for a while as I start 2 weeks of field and labwork in California. My trip will involve collecting some Triassic-Jurassic rhyolites from Mineral King, extracting some zircon from those rhyolites to analyze them for composition and ages at the SHRIMP lab at Stanford University. I'll also be meeting my senior research student in Palo Alto who will be flying in later with zircon from the 1915 eruption of Lassen Peak. The plan right now is to visit Lassen Peak while my student is out in California, but as Eruptions readers Diane reminded me, the Lassen area still have a lot of snow on the ground. How much snow? Well, as of late last week, the southern entrance to the park still had 3 FEET(!) of snow on the ground and the summit of Lassen had 141.5" (almost 12 feet) of snow. Ah, the joys of mountain field work.
So, while I'm off in California, my internet access will be sporadic. Now, as usual, there will be some new articles that will be posted automatically, such as a guest post from Dr. Mariek Schmidt on the hazards of field work, a new volcano profile on Ruapehu along with a review of Clive Oppenheimer's new book "Eruptions that Shook the World". I'll also hopefully be posting the answers to your questions from Dr. Oppenheimer as well.
There will be some new posts when I have internet access, especially if something big happens. I'll also be experimenting with blogging from my iPad, so the posts might not be as entirely link-filled or long as usual. Feel free to use this post as an open thread if something exciting happens in the volcano world.
I'll be back from California in early August and be back on schedule.
Top left: Lassen Peak erupting in 1915.
