Seismicity has continued at Spurr following the explosive activity of 16-17 September. Minor low-amplitude tremor stopped 24 October, but several earthquakes were typically recorded daily, with depths ranging from shallow to nearly 50 km. A swarm of shallow seismic events began at about 0200 on 9 November and strengthened through the day. The alert level was raised (to orange, then red) by AVO, but the swarm subsided the next day without an eruption. An overflight on the 10th revealed no evidence of activity or morphologic changes in the vicinity of the crater. Earthquakes continued to occur beneath Spurr at rates of several per day through mid-November.

Gas emission rates remained low. The gas plume was particularly visible on 29 October because of clear, cool weather. A landslide occurred on the SE side of Crater Peak, sometime after a morning snowfall on 28 October but before the 29 October overflight. The landslide formed a 30-m-wide scar near 2,000 m altitude and carried debris to ~1,000 m elevation.

Geological Summary. The summit of Mount Spurr is a large lava dome constructed at the center of a roughly 5-km-wide horseshoe-shaped caldera open to the south. The volcano lies 130 km W of Anchorage and NE of Chakachamna Lake. The caldera was formed by a late-Pleistocene or early Holocene debris avalanche and associated pyroclastic flows that destroyed an ancestral edifice. The debris avalanche traveled more than 25 km SE, and the resulting deposit contains blocks as large as 100 m in diameter. Several ice-carved post-caldera cones or lava domes lie in the center of the caldera. The youngest vent, Crater Peak, formed at the breached southern end of the caldera and has been the source of about 40 identified Holocene tephra layers. Eruptions from Crater Peak in 1953 and 1992 deposited ash on the city of Anchorage.

Information Contacts: AVO.