Elevated levels of seismicity continue to be recorded during 6-13 May. The AVO webcam images showed small steam plumes during the early part of this week. A pilot report received on 9 May described a small steam plume reaching 60-100 m (200-300 feet) above the summit crater. The crater lake level continues to drop, exposing more areas of steaming rock in the crater walls. Continued heat flux is indicated by vigorously upwelling water in the melt pit lake, rapid melting of ice and snow that has fallen into the lake, and minor steaming from rock surfaces and smaller melt pits in the vicinity of the summit crater. Spurr remained at Concern Color Code Yellow.

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.

Source: US Geological Survey Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO)