56.0°

Only a month ago, Mount Redoubt came roaring back to life in a fit of seismic activity that prompted experts to issue warnings that the peak could erupt within a matter of hours.

Hours have since faded into days, days into weeks, and while the peak has remained active, it has yet to erupt.

John Power, a geophysicist at the Alaska Volcano observatory in Anchorage, said the peak has continued to show signs that have led him and his colleagues to believe the peak will still erupt.

"The signs of unrest are still there, and what is apparent is that what's causing the current unrest is that we've moved some new magma under Redoubt at some depth," Power said.

Whether that magma boils to the top is hard to predict, but Power thinks it's likely.

"I still feel that the likely outcome will be some kind of eruptive activity," he said.

Just the same, he admitted it's possible the volcano may cool off.

The activity on and surrounding the prominent peak that sits 50 to 60 miles west of Kenai has been anything but ordinary, so far.

When the peak first started showing signs that it might erupt in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, staff at the observatory anticipated a similar eruption to the series that began in December 1989.

"In 1989 we went from what was apparently no background activity to a full eruption in 23 hours," Power said.

Staff expected a similar event Jan. 25. To their surprise, however, things have gone differently.

"We went down to the track thinking we were going to be running a sprint, and now we're running a marathon," he said.

The volcano's seismic activity over the past month, available for viewing in real time on AVO's Web site, could be described as a roller coaster of highs and lows.

Powers said it's possible the current trend could go on for a period of months before anything happens.

"We came at this thinking it was going to be a quick process. There are always surprises in this business, and this is one of them. The volcano is taking its time heading in whichever direction it's going to go," he said.

Redoubt's sauntering pace isn't the only thing that caught the observatory by surprise.

The national media blitz came much faster than the staff at AVO were used to.

"We usually get a burst of media interest once an eruption begins," Power said.

Typically, he said Outside media don't pay attention to the volcanoes while they're still in their early stages of erupting like Redoubt was.

Why Redoubt caught so much attention from Outside so quickly was unclear, though Power guessed that Alaska's recent increased national media exposure, the peak's proximity to the large communities and its history of disrupting air traffic all played a role.

All the attention isn't a bad thing either, Power said. He said the added exposure allows him and his colleagues to better communicate what's going on and what to expect.

"If there's a demand for information we try to step up and fill it," he said. "The whole idea is to deal with this appropriately and the news media is the most effective way to get the word out."

That being said, the media blitz did flood AVO's Web site, causing it to temporarily shutdown.

Power said the site has since been revamped and made "more robust," so in future events it doesn't suffer a similar fate.

Power credited the staff at AVO for its hard work not only on things like the Web site, but on monitoring 24-hour feeds while installing and maintaining measurement instruments on the mountain.

"It definitely adds to the stress level when we're doing things like this," he said.

Power said the staff has had quite a bit of experience in the last year operating on a 24-hour/seven-day-a-week schedule. The eruptions of Kasatochi, Okmok and Cleveland in the Aleutian Islands have all, at various times through the last year, kept staff at the observatory on their toes.

"We've been here almost as much as not in conducting 24-hour observations," he said.

The observatory has been getting staffing help from the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash., and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

While magma may or may not be rising under the surface of Redoubt, the costs at the Anchorage observatory most definitely are, according to Chris Waythomas, a geologist with AVO.

Additional staffing combined with frequent flights to and from the mountain to update and maintain equipment adds up quickly, Waythomas said.

He said that during events like this, the observatory has to cut back from other expenditures such as annual maintenance of equipment on other peaks.

The observatory isn't in jeopardy of running out of money, though. Waythomas said the U.S. Geological Survey keeps contingency money available for emergency situations that AVO can fall back on, if needed.

"We marshal resources as we go, and there are contingency pots out there we can tap if wee need to as a last resort."

Dante Petri can be reached at dante.petri@peninsulaclarion.com