May 8, 2008: Volcano

Flickr images by Alex Gutierrez Espinoza.
Erupción del Volcán Chaitén.
Chaitén, Provincia de Palena, X Región de Los Lagos, Chile.


This ought to do wonders for global warming.

That looks awesome and scary at the same time. Almost like the perfect recipe for milkshake.

Reminds me of V-Ger.

Yeah V-Ger..

That is so alien looking.. WOW maybe?

Looks like the giant fireworks snake from South Park.

Smells like photoshop...

Awesome image. I love how the lightning is finding its quickest path to the ground through the hot ash.

The blue lightning bolt in the first image looks fake, but I think it's lens flare and is just a mirror image (flipped upside down) of the bright lightning flash to the left.

Love the lightning storms you get with volcano eruptions, makes it seem like doomsday with the clouds going black with the thunder and lightning

it looks like there are 2 sets of eyes on the right side of the 1st photo. that is extra creepy.

Unfortunately, the original is not large enough to turn into decent wallpaper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glatt Awesome image. I love how the lightning is finding its quickest path to the ground through the hot ash.

Here are a couple shots of Mt St Helens I took during a trip to Ghost Lake. Apologies for the poor quality of the rookie stitching job on the panoramic shot. I like how you can see the orange glow from the lava at the top of the rebuilding dome, and how the steam is escaping from the top.

Wow. That is just amazing! Photoshopped or not, an amazingly beautiful picture.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imigo Jones "Explosive eruption with lightning at Sakurajima Volcano . . . 18 May 1991" Larger version

So, I Jones, what's your story? The neuronal pics made me do a double take. I have diolistically labelled neurons as well as used NG2 antibodies. How you know about that stuff, Willis?


P.S. Welcome

You think the neuron images were intentional? I just assumed he linked to an image that he thought was lightning after seeing a thumbnail of it next to a volcano article.

Probably not, it's Inigo's text after the images, with his :p
I spose he might have found them googling, but regardless it's pretty cool

I assumed he was pointing out the similarities. Which I enjoy finding in nature too btw. Certain trees in the winter look uncannily like astrocytes and certain kind of neurons in their branching patterns.

Oh, yeah. Visually, they fit right in. Amazing really. Some kind of fractal law working there. Or something.

God's just not all that creative. . .


maybe even lazy.

[Atheist] Or maybe we just evolved to see patterns [/Atheist]

BigV, great pics! That must have been really something to stand there and behold the mountain, both the immediacy of its mass but also sensing what that glow and steam meant.



To get more precisely oriented: The shot above is from the northeast (see map below). "We ask that you credit the source of the images as 'Image courtesy of USDA Forest Service, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.' " 'Kay.
MSHNVM Photo Gallery



North is straight right.
So, facing the mountain, V, you were to the left (south or SE) of Spirit Lake for those shots? Nice.

Of course, it's also really something knowing what occurred there when we were younger. The photographer who caught this amazing sequence was somewhere out "your" way, only probably farther south:






"Explosions (red) begin to rip through the landslide (green)
[Original illustrations by T.R. Alpha]"




"Exploded rock debris (red) forms a pyroclastic surge that quickly overtakes the landslide (green)"

Photo sequence: "08:32:21.0 am . . . 08:33:18.8 am"
Page with GIF animation of Rosenquist pics.
The graphic on this page briefly tells the photographer's story. He was 10 miles away.



This graphic (and two added to pic sequence) shows MSH from straight east, or south of you, BigV. Also, the first photo inset must be from the south or southwest of the eruption.

Short USGS page on the mechanisms of magma intrusion, landslide, and explosion of the north face of Mt. St. Helens.
Site map for ton of USGS pages on Mt. St. Helens.
Index for megatons of volcano pages, but inexplicably omitting Io.

some more pix from Chile -- including the ash plume from space.

Fantastic pics and links.

barefoot serpent, cool pic. I have a question below.

Today's the 38th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.



I remember that day as being disastrous at the two opposite corners of the United States, with Mt. St. Helens in Washington and riots in Miami. Here's a page with the text of the Mt. St. Helens story.

So, barefoot serpent, I was going to ask whether you remember the east-west movement of the MSH ash plume back in 1980. It arrived over the Midwest on, I think, May 20. Even at this distance and dilution, the air smelled faintly of sulphur.

More odd was how the light was changed. Whether from sulphur in the air between you and objects down on ground level, or from atmospheric filtering of the sunlight, everything looked barely tinted yellow, as though the CSI: Miami cinematographer had grabbed the wrong filter. Actually, the yellow wasn't that strong (CSI: Miasma is like swimming in orange juice), but just enough to give you the sense that something was wrong. It was like how the light of a partial solar eclipse, or even of a heavy ozone day, is strange.

Ha! I was in a broken down Renault 10 on the side of the freeway outside of Spokane wondering what all the gray snow was.

These are my favorite MSH shots.

Notice these are all before and after shots of the same spots.!!!

As Bruce says, why are there no "during" shots?

Because people were busy screaming and running away?

Actually, there had been plenty of warning that things would be happening, so that area was evacuated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HungLikeJesus As Bruce says, why are there no "during" shots?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imigo Jones So, barefoot serpent, I was going to ask whether you remember the east-west movement of the MSH ash plume back in 1980. It arrived over the Midwest on, I think, May 20. Even at this distance and dilution, the air smelled faintly of sulphur.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imigo Jones So, barefoot serpent, I was going to ask whether you remember the east-west movement of the MSH ash plume back in 1980. It arrived over the Midwest on, I think, May 20. Even at this distance and dilution, the air smelled faintly of sulphur.

I was 50 miles north, in Centralia, WA.
They used snow plows to clear the 4 to 6 inches of ash in the motel parking lot. I've been wearing this belt buckle ever since.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce I was 50 miles north, in Centralia, WA.

Working for Westinghouse in Philly, at the Centralia power plant, till the middle of July that year.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dar512 Actually, there had been plenty of warning that things would be happening, so that area was evacuated.

Harry Truman @ Spirit Lodge.

I think the last two shots are Spirit Lake up close..

Tonight on "Nova"

Nova
"Mystery of the Megavolcano"

A look at a "supervolcano" that erupted some 74,000 years ago in Sumatra and may have precipitated a global deep freeze. Scientists examine evidence in Greenland's ice cap, from beneath the ocean floor, and in ash recovered from across southern Asia. [This quoted from local PBS listings; following material all from Nova "Mystery of the Megavolcano" site, various pages, except for comments in brackets, some font changes, etc. One oil painting. Some smileys. ]



Sixty-two-mile-long Lake Toba, seen in the center of this satellite image, was created by the largest explosive volcanic eruption of the past 100,000 years.

A Supersized Volcano
Beginning in 1949, when Dutch geologist Rein van Bemmelen discovered massive deposits of volcanic rock along the perimeter of Lake Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, scientists knew they were onto something big. The thousand-square-mile area around the lake, it appeared, was a gargantuan caldera once filled not with water but with steaming volcanic ash and pumice. As volcanologists pieced together evidence of the cataclysmic event that took place there 74,000 years ago, as well as two earlier eruptions, Toba seemed so immense it was deemed a "supervolcano." In this interactive [link to slide show on page], see a portrait of the eruption of 74,000 years ago and how it dwarfs even the most disastrous "regular-sized" eruptions of our own era. . . .

To qualify as a supervolcano, a volcano must produce at least 240 cubic miles of magma, or partly molten rock, in a single eruption—about the same volume of water the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico during a single year. . . .



Imagine this view of the devastation caused by the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo covering a whole state or region rather than just the surrounding area, and you get an idea of what a supereruption could unleash.

Flash slide show: Highlights
Magma released, cubic miles of material
Mt. St. Helens, 1980, 0.12 cu mi
Pinatubo, Philippines, 1991, 1.2
Krakatau, 1883, 2.9
Tambora, 1815, 12
Toba, 72K B.C., 672
Over the course of one or two weeks, Toba erupted about 5,600 times the amount of magma released by Mt. St. Helens in 1980. [But see boldface after map.] . . .



The most recent [supervolcano] (Taupo, in New Zealand) occurred 26,500 years ago. One from 74,000 years ago (Toba, in Indonesia) left behind a caldera, or giant crater, about the size of Rhode Island. The biggest one yet identified (La Garita, in Colorado) coughed out 1,200 cubic miles of volcanic materials. On this map [links on page to interactive world map; click numbers 1-12 for descriptions of known supervolcano sites], sample a selection of the aptly named, though thankfully extremely rare, natural cataclysms known as "supereruptions." . . .

A supereruption would not only take out the summit but the entire mountain and much else besides. The caldera that underlies Yellowstone National Park—"caldera" essentially means humongous crater—is over 50 miles long and nearly 30 miles wide. You could fit four Manhattans placed end to end inside. The amount of magma, or molten rock, thrown out by its most recent supereruption 640,000 years ago was a staggering 240 cubic miles, with an ash volume two to three times that.

The intensity of such convulsions matches the magnitude. In A.D. 79, Vesuvius belched out an astounding 100,000 cubic yards of magma per second over a 24-hour period. Yet this is chicken feed compared to supereruptions, which can emit volcanic debris at up to 100 million cubic yards per second. . . .



Cotopaxi, Frederic Edwin Church, 1862
Original 85 inches long; interactive Artchive page zooms to about 24 inches.

All that erupted material wouldn't just fall nearby or waft harmlessly away like Semeru's ash clouds, either. If something the size of that 640,000-year-old Yellowstone eruption occurred under New York City, it would not only obliterate all five boroughs but bury what was left as well as large portions of Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut under half a mile of pyroclastic flow deposits (see diagram at right). Pyroclastic flows comprise all the heavy stuff that collapses out of an ash cloud, and in supereruptions they can travel up to 60 miles away at speeds of 100 yards per second—again, unimaginable fury. . . .

The devastation would spread much farther than the surrounding region. A stone monument atop Semeru memorialized several people who had died there after breathing volcanic fumes. But a supereruption would kill millions. "If you're close enough to the eruption—and in a supereruption that can mean thousands of miles away—if you breathe in the ash in an unprotected way, you're breathing in tiny glass needles," says geologist Michael Rampino of New York University. "They cause the blood vessels in your lungs to pop. Water in your lungs combines with this volcanic ash, and essentially you drown in a kind of soup or cement of wet volcanic ash."