Maybe I’m just a sap, but I enjoyed the near-poetry of this excerpt from yesterday‘s Cascade Range Volcano Update:

Visibility is excellent and likely will remain so throughout the day. A steam plume is rising passively and drifting northward out of the crater. The plume occasionally contains minor ash, which falls out in the crater and on the flank of the volcano, darkening the snow.

Yesterday’s update also reassures us that the recent series of earthquakes at and near Mt Rainier is normal. Good.