"There was a plume of steam in the morning and there was a steam emission all day yesterday, although there were no gas recordings and the magma is still at a very shallow level," said Chane Griggs, a US Geological Survey spokesman said.

"We don't think an imminent eruption will happen."

A week ago, up to four quakes a minute, measuring more than three on the Richter seismic scale, threatened eruption, but the mountain has calmed.

"We have small earthquakes about a magnitude one at about a frequency of five minutes," he said.

On Sunday, the volcano released smoke, which continued Monday, but vulcanologists discarded the imminent eruption that they had predicted earlier in October.

In any case, the observers said that any eruption would be less than the 1980 eruption, which hit 5.1 on the Richter scale, killed 57 people and sent millions of tonnes of ash into the air, covering Portland, in the northwestern state of Oregon and 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south, and Seattle, in the state of Washington 160 kilometers (100 miles) to the north.

The volcano's most recent eruption was in 1986, and has been inactive for the last 18 years.

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