Lahars

Mount Baker has the necessary ingredients to produce lahars and flank failures – an abundance of altered rocks coupled with lots of fragmental material (loose rock and soil) and plenty of water from rain and melting snowfall.

The next eruption of Mount Baker may produce lava flows, pyroclastic flows, tephra falls, lahars, and flanks failures.

Mount Baker's edifice consists mostly of lava flows (as many as 200), and scattered evidence indicates that some of its products were broken up and carried away by glaciers.

Mount Baker is presently not showing signs of renewed magmatic activity, but it will surely become restless again. Future magmatic eruptions at Mount Baker are likely to be preceded by changes at the volcano that could be detected by modern volcano-monitoring techniques.