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#18178 02/03/01 03:21 AM
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Tonight in BBC News Sci-Tech there was a word new to me, about danger threatening areas near West Coast volcanos. Mudslides caused the most extensive damage to property from Mt.Saint Helens eruption. Their technical name it turns out is "lahar" which I had never seen before. Perhaps it would be interesting to have contributions for other uncommon words on this subject that may show up in news. wwh


#18179 02/03/01 04:14 AM
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Scree is pretty uncommon. Shoot, there's a name for the particulate that falls during and after an eruption, and I
can't think of it. Max would know.


#18180 02/03/01 04:27 AM
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Shoot, there's a name for the particulate that falls during and after an eruption, and I can't think of it. Max would know.

hot stuff



#18181 02/03/01 10:27 AM
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A lahar occurs when a lake in the crater of an active volcano overflows or the mountain erupts. They're a mixture of water, ice and volcanic debris. Lahars are pretty diabolical, because they generally happen when no one's particularly looking for them (being at the tops of mountains an' all). One occurred on Mt Ruapehu in 1953, swept down the mountain and destroyed the main trunk railway bridge at Tangiwai between Waiouru and Ohakune a few minutes before the daily express between Wellington and Auckland crossed it. A lot of people died.

There's now a lahar warning system on Mt Ruapehu. If you're interested, this link will show you what's what!

http://www.learnz.org.nz/2k/tongariro/t_lahars.htm

Scree is common enough here, Jackie. It occurs on the majority of the mountains in the Southern Alps which are mostly made up of greywacke rock. Scree is loose rock and gravel in a continuous slow landslide. Crossing it carelessly is one of the most common causes of injuries to hikers here in NZ. I got caught in a scree slide some years ago which was set off by the guy I was hiking with. It carried me about 20 metres and then "ran out" on a shallower slope below. But there could just as easily have been a bluff below me and then it would have been "good night all!" For some strange reason I wasn't very polite to him in spite of the fact it was just an inadvertent misstep on his part.



The idiot also known as Capfka ...
#18182 02/03/01 01:00 PM
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I think the word I was looking for was tephra. It was in C.K.'s link--thank you. I sicced Atomica on it. Atomica
didn't have it, and switched over and google-searched on its own! Thanks again, Jazz-o.

And, oh, C.K.--I meant that the word scree is not in common usage. I am very glad you're still with us.


#18183 02/05/01 02:15 AM
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Lahar is one of the contributions of Javanese to the English language. Others are batik and gong.

Bingley


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#18184 02/05/01 09:28 PM
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>Shoot, there's a name for the particulate that falls during and after an eruption, and I can't think of it. Max would know.

>hot stuff

This IS a family chat area. Please refer to Jackie by more acceptable terms :)



TEd
#18185 02/05/01 11:44 PM
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hot stuff...

Thanks, Ted. The gutter hath a new king!


#18186 02/06/01 11:22 AM
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Volcanoes give us aa and pahoehoe, not to mention tufa and tuff, and pyroclastic flow.


#18187 02/06/01 01:10 PM
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Jackie, i think scree is pretty common up and down Appalalain's-- and i know it also exist in Rockies-- same sort of factured shale-- most of the scree i've seen has been slag heaps (I paid good money to take a tour of a coal mine, and afterwards when fosile hunting-- they took us to a slag heap of shale, and let us climb up, and slip down the scree while hunting-- but i got some good fosiles!)

We also got to see a great example of a syncline and anticline-- geologist are fun--
Their names for things show even they have trouble remembering what's what.
Like:
Syncline's point down-- to the place sinners might end up--
Anticlines go up
These words are used to define the corregated like folds in rocks-- They are commonly seen in mountainous areas, and US east coast (very old, very eroded mountain range) has some great examples. In new mountain ranges they are often not as visible.

and
stalactites (stay up on the roof of a cave---glued on tight!) and stalacmites.

One of NY geologist-- Sydney Horstein-- has a little ditty about NY geology
Manhattan is schist
The Bronx is gneiss,
and NY is not with out its faults!
(it is common to intentionally mispronounce schist)
It not much-- but we've had 2 earthquakes in the past 2 months-- both in the 2's (2.5 and 2.9--i think) one on Manhattan's east side (felt 30 mile away) and one in lower Connecticut, and Ohio had one too.


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