A grant to the University of Washington from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation could pave the way for a system to provide a warning seconds to minutes in advance of a major offshore earthquake in the Northwest.
UW seismologists have begun recording a slow-moving and unfelt seismic event under the Olympic Peninsula, and it promises to be the best-documented such event in the eight years since the regularly occurring phenomena were first discovered.
When Steve Malone retired earlier this month, he could take satisfaction in the great strides that have been made in forecasting volcanic eruptions, particularly in the Pacific Northwest.
Steve Malone began studying Mount St. Helens in 1973. He didn’t know that just seven years later he would be tracking swarms of earthquakes signaling that the mountain was about to blow its top.