The big geology news right now is the M8 earthquake in American Samoa that generated a killer tsunami (which made it all the way to the Bay Area in California).


Mammoth Mountain in California’s Long Valley region.

In more benign, volcano-related news:

  • The aviation alert level at Redoubt in the Alaska has been returned to Green/Normal, which means that for all intents-and-purposes, the eruption that started earlier this year is over. The new dome totals ~91 million cubic yards of lava, slowly adding back to the north side of the volcano.
  • Eruptions reader Doug C. pointed out to me that there was a couple small earthquake swarm (see the update for 9/28/2009 and 9/29/2009) this week at Long Valley/Mammoth Mountain in California. The earthquakes were all fairly small, in the M1 range – and deep, at ~20 km / 12 miles depth. Just shows that there might be magma burbling around down there somewhere, but this doesn’t seem like much beyond some transient noise (and the alert level stays at Green/Normal).