My plane landed in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) at about 1700 hours after a full day spent on the plane travelling from the other end of the planet. My mission here was clear, to take a close look myself at Mt St Helens, which had been reported to be active for months.
Map of Washington, Mt. St. Helens is in the center
Along the way towards the visitor centre just opened by the state of Washington, my mind was having a recap on what had happened on Mt St Helens. Two months ago, March 20th, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck underneath Mt St Helens which signal the reawaked of the volcano. Scientists flocked to the area, hoping to get a better understanding on the plate movement between Juan de Fuca and North American plates. Well they had made a right choice coming here as Mt St Helens became active again after sleeping peacefully for 120 years. No longer than five days later, ash was released from the crater that was blown open by a small explosion.
Explosion equals to danger, and when there is danger there is evacuation. The local people are immediately evacuated, accompanied by opened visitor centre to serve as a good observatory point. Similar explosion continued until April, but these are only small scale ones. Though some of the pressures are slowly released by these small scale explosions, but it is not difficult to notice that a large amount of stress is still building in progress. 
Now May 14th, looking at Mt St Helens at a distance, the shape of the mountain looks just same as Fuji Mountain in Japan, with upper part covered with thin snow. No wonder it shares the same name ‘The Fuji of America’, even though it is only 2550 meters elevated.
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