Why Mount Rainier Is The United States' Most Dangerous Volcano 

*Me looking out window at Mt. Hood while this video plays. 😅

That is a lot of repeating in the first 5 minutes.

my mom was working in yakima washington the day of mt st helens eruption she has a full mason jar of mt st helens ash

You forget Mt Baker, one of the most frequently erupting volcanoes in the Cascade Range…and Glacier Peak, a little mentioned and not as well studied volcano between Baker and Ranier.

Watching this while waiting at a bus station in Seattle overlooking Mt. Rainier

In affected areas in Washington, schoolchildren have lahar drills. Of all the dangers of these volcanos, rivers of boiling mud moving at 80mph are truly terrifying.

I live in an area that is expected to have a magnitude 9 earthquake, the US’s most dangerous volcano, and in the area of a major volcano that erupted 45 years ago. _Feeling good_

Here's an unusual video request: the geography of ski resorts in the United States! Exploring why there are no ski resorts in Kentucky, yet there are in Tennessee, Alabama, and Rhode Island!

Crater Lake is also volcanic as well as Mt. Shasta.

Timely video. I flew home from California last week and entertained myself by volcano spotting all the way up the cascades.

Anywhere there are hot springs, mud pots or geysers, you've got volcanic potential, even if there hasn't been an actual eruption for millenia. Many examples of these throughout the South Western states.

Interesting content and nice graphics, but why do you keep repeating yourself every 20 seconds? I must have heard you say "there are a lot of volcanoes but they're relatively quiet" like six times. Happens with many other pieces of info in the video too. Other than that thank you for the good content!

St. Helen's erupted just as I graduated high school. We lived in Hillsboro, just west of Portland, and had a view of the mountain until the top blew off. We got fallout about a week after the eruption, and the ash stuck around for 2-3 years. That stuff doesn't wash away easily.

No mention of Mount Baker in northern Washington state. It's been steaming for as long as I can remember. If it should erupt, the city of Bellingham, Washington might be in trouble.

I can look out my upstairs window and see "Big Old Mt Rainier" whenever it's clear. It's so close.

Mt. Baker: "Hold my beer..."

I still have Mt. St. Helens a nice sample from Missoula, Montana. Shared recently with son & daughter now in their 50’s. Interesting in texture.

Did you know that the US Navy names its ammunition ships after volcanos?

Eruption for Mt. Rainier is not the real problem, it’s the Lahar or mudflows and these can happen even without a ‘boom’. There are areas down stream in the Lahar flow paths such as Puyallup River valley that have warning systems similar to how many costal regions have tsunami warning systems.

Mt. Baker juuuuuuust south of the Canadian border threatens the fast growing Fraser Valley region of greater Metro Vancouver... Even the ABC Country Kitchen Restaurant chain around Western Canada used to feature the "Mt. Baker Explosion" Ice Cream/Brownie Sundae as a tacky/kitschy reminder of what will happen eventually... Delicious too!

Yellowstone: Am I a joke to you?

I'm more worried about a cascadia quake than I am a volcanic event.

you are missing a couple of major active cascade peaks. mt baker near Bellingham, and glacier peak just north of Seattle, the other big reason the cascades are active vs the rockies, is the amount of water carried by the oceanic crust in the Juan de Fuca plate.

Hawaii's volcanos are nothing like the potentially explosive ones in Cascadia. Has to do with gas content within the magma.

Good video. One widely overlooked and ignored mountain is, Mt Adams in Washington state just north of the Oregon border. It is very active and dangerous, there are not even any sensors there.

so there actually are a couple volcanoes in Colorado and NM that are either "technically" active or just outside the window where they would be considered active. Yellowstone isn't the only one. but as they are relatively unknown, even in geography circles, and pose little threat (as of now), I'm not surprised to see them being omitted

I'm general maintenance in Mt Rainier National Park. Just letting you know there's a lot of close monitoring systems spread throughout the whole park. They will know about a week in advance before it blows.

I grew up looking at the Mt. St. Helens perfect cone from Mission Ridge ski area, 100 miles North.w 2 months after it blew, I flew directly over it on a major airline; pilot dipped the wing,(which i don't think is approved by FAA) & i stared down into that massive crater; Awe-inspiring! 1 cubic mile of material was displaced, either incinerated & rose 40,000 ft.as ash, which circled the globe, or slid down into lakes & rivers as a lahar; flattened 60+ square miles of trees! Killed 67 people. 😢 Few weeks later, 1 of many subsequent ash eruptions dumped ash on us at Lake Chelan, 100 miles away. Because volcano now 1300 ft.shorter, its peak is not visible from Mission Ridge.

Don't get me wrong, this video about the cascades is interesting. However, I did want to point out that you do say the same information repeatedly. Even I dealt with that with writing in general.

Thank you for having accurate graphics and video of the PNW volcanos. I appreciate that.

The Dotsero Crater in Colorado. That erupted in the last 10,000 years and could erupt again so I wouldn't declare the Rockies confidently safe.

Fun fact: Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens volcanic bulges are expanding rapidly. As far as rocks are rapid.

Great video! You should make a video about the risk of tsunami in the Pacific Northwest. Less time to react, more large population centers be flooded. Can the government do something about this like encouraging housing developments in higher elevation areas, like 100 ft and higher over sea level (or whatever is higher than predicted max tsunami wave)?

The eruption of glacier peak would actually threaten just as many homes as rainier, if not more. Surprised you didnt mention it in the video but yet you mentioned st helens which at thie point doesnt really threat anything, other than tourists in the forbiden zone in the case of an eruption.

Mt Baker would like a word with you Geoff !!!

People keep forgetting about Mt. Baker. While relatively quiet now, in the 70s when I was a kid, it was the mountain everyone thought was going to erupt. Steam vent eruptions were a common occurrence and despite this we still went camping in the forests up there. It was likely this complacency of years of mild activity on Baker that amounted to nothing that led to so many people not taking the danger posed by the activity at Mt. St. Helens serious.

Baker is more active than Rainier- and is more likely to cook off before Flat Top.

I'm from Washington State. I was 7 years old when Mount St. Helens blew. I remember it like it was yesterday. No one knows when these volcanos are going to blow.

Torfino, CA just had two big quakes this morning. A magnitude 6.5, and a magnitude 6.6 (which was removed from the USGS website) and at least 3 tsunami byoys activated. Awesome timing and amazing video! Thank you.

So no tornados or hurricanes flattening the PNW, but we're all playing the lottery that the volcano eruptions and 9.0 earthquakes won't happen in our life times.

The video is titled "Mount Rainier", but it really isn't about Rainer. (he spends less than 2 minutes talking about Rainer) Here's what he should have said: The first thing to note is that Mount Rainer hasn't actually erupted in a long, long time. Its last major eruption was over 500 years ago, and the last time there was even any activity seen (just a bit of smoke coming out) was in the mid 1800s. That's actually part of the reason WHY it's now so dangerous. People don't (generally) build big cities right next to actively erupting volcanoes, but the last time this one erupted was before the USA was even a country. A bunch of people have since built cities & towns near it, and a bunch of those cities/towns are right in the path geological records show the flows coming off it will go... In the video he did mention Lahars, and those are what would cause the big problems with Rainer. See...Rainer is big. It's the 5th tallest point in the contiguous US, and it's absolutely massive. And on top of it sits about 2 dozen major glaciers, that have many times more ice in them than all the other Cascade volcanoes do combined. If/when Rainer does erupt, a whole lot of that ice is going to melt...and records show its path of least resistance is going to send a lot of it toward the Puget Sound. Seattle won't really be affected, comparatively, because it's too far north. Tacoma (250k pop) and Puyallup (50k pop) however, as well as a bunch of other small towns, are smack dab in the flow zones. Hundreds of thousands of people live in potential lahar flow zones. It won't be lava or ash that will cause the devastation. It's going to be a dozen glaciers worth of ice melting causing trees to get crushed, mud and rocks to get swept up along with all manner of debris, and sending it all screaming down one of the largest mountains in the US and into some very urban areas. Lahars coming off Rainer could reach 50-100 feet in height and be moving upwards of 50mph. Now imagine something like that just rolling into (onto?) your town... Mt. Rainer is actually considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, not just the US. It's what's known as a Decade Volcano, because it's on a list of the 16 most potentially devastating volcanoes being studied in the world. The only other one in the US is Mauna Loa, in HI. The good news is it's not showing any signs it's going to erupt next week or something. The bad news is it's acting much like it's acted for many thousands of years, which means that it's really more a "when" it erupts again than an "if". How devastating it will end up being will probably depend a lot on how many more people move into the danger zones for it before it does...

Rainier Lahar flows "unlikely to reach Seattle" and inference that the Seattle metro area "including Tacoma" might be affected are slightly odd statements. Seattle may be the most famous city in the region, but if Rainier blows the only impact in Seattle will be to the view. If you look up the USGS lahar flow maps, there is no way anything is making it anywhere near Seattle. Folks living in Seattle need to worry more about the fault near them, earthquakes, and problems stemming from liquefaction of the soil they are sitting on. The South Sound area is the one that has to watch out for Rainier (as well as tidal waves from the Seattle area faults and earthquakes from the Tacoma area faults). The most likely lahar flows from Rainier would wind up following the Puyallup river basin doing a lot of damage to Orting, Puyallup, and the working harbor area of Tacoma. Less likely, but still pretty catastrophic, flows would follow the Nisqually or Cowlitz rivers and affect the small towns situated along them as well as the city of Yelm. If the eruption is big enough, a blanket of ash will also get dumped on Yakima and other towns east of the cascades. If you really wanted to simplify it, you could just note that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the area presently living on top of prior historic lahar flows and therefore at extreme risk in the event of another eruption.

I remember when St. Helens erupted. I was standing on the peak. I jumped onto a Douglas fir tree and surfed the lahar all the way down to safety. I received several high fives.

I directly in the Lahar path. Major Pompeii vibes

I grew up in the Seattle/Tacoma area. My very first memory is the Mt St Helens eruption. I vividly remember going into our backyard and everything being covered in ash. I was really little so I thought that it was snow.

I love Mt. Lassen. I climbed it three times over 30 years ago. Great hike because you can see the boiling mud and steam coming out of the caldera.

Love your videos! FYI Mauna Kea is pronounced Mauna ‘Kay-uh’ NOT Mauna ‘key’

i live in WA, and I am personally proud that you said Puget Sound correctly. thank you.

Just finished the Michael Crichton and James patterson book Eruption, very good.

I can clearly see Mt Hood and Mt St Helens from my boat.

Aloha from Kailua Kona. Kilauea did erupt in 2022. It went off during Mauna Loa eruption in November- December.

Your enunciation & pronunciation of Hawaiian words is quite impressive. Thanks for the info

Mt St Helen's erupted on my 8th birthday, it was a Saturday morning and we canceled my birthday that day at Ferralls as we had to go get my grandparents in Yakima.

Not bad, despite some repetitiveness. This at least avoids many common clickbait exaggerations. It would also be helpful to note that, with the prevailing winds blowing west to east, it’s not likely that Seattle or Portland will be seriously affected by ash fall from any of the currently active volcanoes. Lahars, in contrast, could be a significant problem for the big metropolitan areas. Even so, it should be made clear that even the largest potential lahars from Mt. Rainier would be unlikely to bury significant populated portions of Tacoma or Seattle by the time they reached those cities. Instead, their primary hazard to the great cities on Puget Sound would be to port facilities, especially with the clogging of shipping channels in the Puyallup and Duwamish estuaries. The greatest risk to human life from big Mt. Rainier lahars would be in areas closer to the mountain that have been deeply buried in recent geologic history, such as Enumclaw, Sumner, and Puyallup. Those sites were, for example, inundated in the Osceola Mudflow off Mt. Rainier some 5,600 years ago.

Mt. Rainier is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful sights on earth. I was born here. I am now 58 years old and Mt. Rainier has never changed. St. Helens did but not Rainier. I’m not going to spend my time worrying about it.

I think the Rockies were formed not so much by the Pacific Plate subducting but by the ancient Farallon Plate. The remnants of it today are the Juan De Fuca and Gorda plates.

Seattle and Portland can get wiped out, but Mt. Baker blowing would be a big problem.

At this point if Mount Rainier took out Seattle, it would be biblical.

Ive stayed in an A frame on Rainier - skied for the first time on Mt Hood and spent my birthday on MSH. I love all three of those volcanoes/mountains and im not even from those parts. Im from Pittsburgh.

I know yellow stone had'nt erupeted in a very long time , but if it does, the experts say we'll all be in trouble!

I've been baffled why Rainer has been so quiet when St. Helens has been repeatedly active in recent memory.

Could be worse. Could be Auckland, New Zealand which is built on top of 55 dormant volcanos, at least one of which is overdue for a major eruptuon.

why does everyone not include Mt. Baker?

Mount Baker is more active than Rainier or Hood. Baker puts up steam plumes fairly often.

Cool to see a vid on this. I’m a local radio news reporter in SW Washington and grew up in one of the closest towns to St. Helen’s.

My dad's a geology professor and was concerned when I moved to Portland yrs ago and while I've toured Pompeii and saw the level of destruction, It's the catastrophic earthquakes that will really wreck the PNW.

It's something of an urban legend that there's an active volcano within Portland City limits ... technically, it's a cinder cone and isn't expected to erupt again ...and very much like the celebrated Parícutin in Mexico ...

I was always fascinated with this stuff. I lived in Montreal,Canada as a kid and after watching a movie about a a new hotel built near a dormant Volcano, since it was a disaster film. It wasn’t dormant for long. I always had this scary dream that Mount Royal would erupt. And let me tell you it was vivid. Ever since I’ve been interested in geology and volcanology as a casual hobby. That would make a good disaster film Mount Royal erupting,despite its geological status. 😮

I watched Mt St Helens erupt on May 18th, 1980. I was driving through Portland with my mother and my sister. As we headed east I could see the black ash billowing up above the smog from the factories along the river and below the clouds.

I am watching this, looking directly out at Mt. Ranier. Most of us in Seattle and Portland are familiar with our volcanic neighbors and the risks living nearby them. Areas most at risk from the volcanoes have well established and marked evacuation routes. Many of us have risks from tsunamis as well and have well marked tsunami evacuation routes. A major part of downtown Seattle is below sea level, so there's always risks.

I always feared that Mount Rainier would erupt and destroy Seattle before I could visit the city, and I don't even live on the US West Coast!

Missed one mt baker also active today

This is B.S. Here’s why: as a lifelong native, with family that goes back generations upon generations in Washington state, and having geologists and volcanologists in the family. Listen up, All of the volcanoes in the Cascade range are connected underground by a root system. Literally the magma moves underneath the crust of the Earth flowing freely: if an eruption were to happen, as it did in 1980, it chooses the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance is the youngest volcano in the chain, which is Mt. Saint Helens. ANY pressure of eruption, will always vent from where it can break through and relieve the pressure - and that my friends, is Mt. Saint Helens. It ain’t Rainier. It would take a major earthquake (along the subduction Cascadia fault) to shake and rattle Mt. Rainier. IF the subduction zone along the Cascadia fault, slips enough to cause Rainier to erupt? That’ll be just one of all catastrophes.

i love watching Mt. Baker steaming... happens often.

St Helens also erupted for 3+ years from 2004 to 2008, it was spewing smoke daily, the vent grew a bunch too en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%E2%80%932008_volcanic_activity_of_Mount_St._Helens

I moved from the supervolcano in Southern California to living on Haleakala now within driving distance of Mount Hood

Graphical error at 4:31. "Nearby" Portland, Oregon probably shouldn't be marked as Portland, WA. I'm guessing the script merely confused the graphic designer.

I always thought the super volcano under Yellowstone was the most dangerous volcano in N. America. Although Geoff didn't mention it, I have the Glacier Peak volcano in Washington in my backyard - which is also listed as very high danger level. That's the one I try not to think about.

Great video Geoff! Thanks for sharing this information with us!

Thanks for the info but please stop with the repetition .. i

I grew up on the peninsula. They told us as early as elementary school that we were overdue by 50 years for a bad quake. Mt. St. Helens wasn't enough. So the longer it went without mid-sized quakes, the more danger we would be in. Add in how much military activity we have and have always been in the top ten areas in the US to be bombed, it is hard to determine what will doom us first. I love the geography, don't get me wrong. But I find it important to tell new transplants it would be a good idea to have a plan to flee.

Mt Spurr is right across the inlet from anchorage. I remember when it erupted in 92. Covered Anchorage in ash. Wish I would have collected some of that ash.

You could include Mount Baker which is also in Washington state but that would threaten Vancouver and you are only worried about American cities.

"Kea" in "Mauna Kea" is two syllables. I pronounce it kay-uh. I have spent several months of my life in total on the summit of Mauna Kea (and sleeping down at the 9000ft level), professionally. Also, I have always heard Haleakala pronounced differently. It starts out like "Hall"

What's with Mount Baker? Extinct?

Why wasn't Mt. Baker, near Bellingham, WA mentioned?

Surprising that there's no mention of the Three Sisters considering how active that region is and it's proximity to the Bend area

I’m old enough to remember Mt. St. Helens

I get to see Mt. Rainier every day. It’s beautiful

Lassen county locals are less worried about the volcano & just dreading the annual forest fires every summer.

You forgot Mt. Baker. That one is actually more scary than Rainier. Especially because it isn't instrumented as well as the other major peaks.

Most likely St. Helens . I personally think clear lake volcano is next most likely to erupt after St Helens . But nobody really knows. It could be a volcano in Idaho or New Mexico cause that's just how unpredictable volcanoes are.

Mt St Helen's and Mt Rainer. What heard as a youth. Old local Indian stories refer to them as something like husband and wife. When one mountain blows its top, the other mountain will follow within 100 years or so. Like a husband and wife arguing back and forth. I don't know if this is true, but I did hear this story back when Mt St Helen's stared it's rumbling in the late 70s.

Mount Adams in Washington state I’ve heard it’s dead because the tube going up for all the lava that connects it to everything. I heard that blew apart back in the early days.

I grew up in the shadow of Rainier. I live in the shadow of the Olympic Mountain range now where there are no threats, but my family lives between the shadows of Rainier and St. Helens. What is the threat level posed by Mt. Baker in Northern Washington? That mountain has had small venting events in recent years and isn't far from metropolitan areas.

8:49. Thats when he starts talking about the title of the video.

Thank you! I live at the base of Mt. Rainer! Subscribed!!

You didn’t mention Mt Baker which I had always thought was considered active

I see Mt Hood on my commute to work and on my way home. I keep wait to see it blow! I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, but you never know! Mt St Helens erupted around the time I was conceived, so I barely missed that one.

Don't forget about the Sisters, Mt Jefferson, Washington, Baker, Adams, Glacier Peak and the Newberry Volcano Edit: Mt Bachelor, Broken Top, and Diamond Peaks as well