potential threat to life and property. Accordingly, the Johnston Ridge Observatory overlooking Mount St. Helens was evacuated; television media established their bases at Castle Lake Viewpoint about away, while tourists moved to various locations for several miles along State Route 504. On October 3, low-frequency harmonic tremor activity began at around 3:00a.m. PDT and lasted for up to 90 minutes, which may have indicated the movement of magma beneath the mountain. The tremors were followed by a steam release at around 10:40a.m. Mount St. Helens' eruptive activity continued over the following days, with steam releases occurring on October 4 at 9:47 a.m., 2:12p.m., and at 5:40p.m.; then again on the morning of October 5 at around 9:03a.m., with an ash plume that dusted Randle, Morton, and Packwood, Washington, towns on or near U.S. Route 12 about from the volcano. Between steam releases, elevated seismic activity on the mountain continued with the strongest tremors remaining near magnitude 3.0. On October 6, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the alert level was being lowered, saying "We no longer think that an eruption is imminent in the sense of minutes or hours." Magma reached the surface of the volcano around October 11, resulting in the building of a new lava dome on the existing dome's south side. Dome building continued, with the USGS reporting in early November 2004 that magma was being extruded at a rate of 7 to 10 cubic meters per second. Had magma continued to extrude at this rate uninterrupted, the crater would have been completely filled and Mount St. Helens would have regained its former height in about eleven years. The Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam located at Johnston Ridge was able to view the new dome especially at night when the glow of new magma was visible via the camera's infrared capabilities. Included in the new dome was a feature dubbed the "Whaleback" (named such because of its close resemblance to the back of a whale), which was a lava spine, a long shaft of solidified magma being extruded by pressure of magma underneath it. This feature was very hot but fragile. The edges of it began crumbling rapidly, forming loose material around the new dome. The rate of crumbling soon matched the rate of growth, with the size of the whaleback remaining fairly constant. 2005 activity On February 1, 2005, the new lava dome on Mount Saint Helens