Where There's Smoke...

Occam's Razor basically says the correct explanation of any phenomenon is most likely the simplist. Cora said, "if you hear hooves, think horse not zebra." Either way, just because there is smoke in the direction of an inactive volcano on the horizon, it seems the most likely reason (to me) might be a forest fire not necessarily an eruption. Ok, let me explain:

I was watching tv this afternoon and the phone rang. It was my dad. He said there was an unconfirmed report that Mt. Adams had erupted. I briefly went through several thoughts, one of which was I had felt no trimmers and I had not heard anything on TV...that is the kind of thing the news people live for. My dad said someone had called him saying that from their house, it looked like the mountain had blown. He was driving up on the hill to have a look from his angle. Cora and I needed to go over to her parents for a few minutes anyway, so we jumped in the car. Well, it looked like a forest fire to us...no large volcanoes, or small ones...or mountains within at least 30 miles. I called him and told him my prognosis, to which he agreed. A case of mistaken identity, but it got me out of the house and woke me up since at about that time I was starting to get the nods.

There WAS ALOT of smoke coming from the fire, so I suppose it could have been an easy mis-identification. See for yourself.

As an UPDATE: I did a litte searching and here is a site that explains the fire, which is in the Cold Springs area near Mt. Adams. An apparent lightning strike started it. It was first reported Saturday around 8pm. Here are a few pictures (better than mine, which I have borrowed from that page, the appropriate sources for the photos are listed here.

The first was taken from south of Goldendale.

This was taken from Troutlake. OK, that one did not load. You will definitely have to look at that other site...

and this one was taken from Vancouver, so if you view all of these pictures you start out North East of the mountain and begin in a great arc around the mountain ending up South West of the Mountain in Vancouver...I wonder where I can get pictures taken from the direction of Chehalis or Olympia...