Volcano Observatory

As many in the Pacific Northwest can attest to, the winter of 2017 has been a rough one. Deep snow in the high country buried volcano monitoring sites and caused loss of telemetry and/or power. These problems reduced the Mount St. Helens seismic network, operated jointly by the Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO) and the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN), to roughly half its normal operating capacity. The consistently bad weather prevented CVO and PNSN staff from performing any mid-winter repairs.