Pacific volcano erupts near Marianas islands

SAIPAN, Northern Marianas A volcanic eruption near the Pacific’s Northern Mariana Islands shot clouds of ash and vapor nearly eight miles into the sky, federal scientists said.The eruption occurred early Saturday and appeared to come from an underwater volcano off Sarigan, a sparsely inhabited island about 100 miles north of the U.S. commonwealth’s main island of Saipan.The Northern Marianas are about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

USGS volcanologist Game McGimsey said Sunday that scientists are still trying to pinpoint the source but evidence is pointing to an underwater mountain.”People on the island (Sarigan) heard a loud explosion and almost immediately there was a heavy ash fall which turned to a light fall fairly quickly,” McGimsey told The Associated Press. He said there was no ash in Saipan or Guam.The eruption was fairly brief and no other volcanic clouds have been detected, said McGimsey, who is based in Anchorage, Alaska. Scientists don’t know if the undersea activity is continuing.

Satellite images showed the cloud reaching to 40,000 feet. But the USGS said it was largely water vapor and strong winds were dispersing it.McGimsey said researchers flew over the area Sunday and spotted discolored water presumably over the volcanic vent, estimated at 1,000 feet beneath sea level.(AP)

Tungurahua volcano erupts, Ecuadorean villagers evacuate

the second volcanic eruption in Latin America on Friday, loud explosions shook the ground and rattled windows near the volcano known as Tungurahua in the indigenous Quechua language, 130 km (81 miles) southeast of Quito, officials said.Residents close to the 5,020-meter (16,500 feet) volcano were evacuated from Cusua and Juive Grande villages, the president’s office said in a statement.

Officials in the area said hundreds of families had been moved, while Ecuador’s aviation authorities closed the airport in coastal Guayaquil and altered the routes of some flights to avoid the ash cloud.”The eruptive column is some 10 km (33,000 feet) high,” Hugo Yepes, director of Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute, told reporters.

Tungurahua has been classed as active since 1999 and had a strong eruption in 2008. It is one of eight active volcanoes in the country.Yepes said ash plumes could “easily” reach the 35,000 to 40,000 feet at which long distance flights operate. “As such there should be at least a diversion for international routes,” he said.Ash particles can cause serious damage if sucked into airplane engines. An Icelandic volcano caused widespread disruption and major losses for airlines after flights were grounded for days in Europe in mid-April.The authorities temporarily closed the airport in Guayaquil, where the runway was covered in ash, and diverted planes heading there to Quito and Manta.

Officials also altered some flight routes to avoid the plume, including Lima-Quito and domestic routes between the capital and Guayaquil and the Andean city of Cuenca.The national director of civil aviation, Fernando Guerrero, told Reuters that the Guayaquil airport would reopen later once the runway had been cleared.

The authorities have moved to safety about 500 families in five communities close to Tungurahua, officials said, while an unknown number of people left the area of their own accord.”At the moment we are keeping a yellow alert in effect for the area,” said Fausto Chunata, mayor of the nearby town of Penipe, adding that they might order more evacuations later.

Banos, a town popular with foreign and local tourists, was among the places evacuated voluntarily, officials said.In Guatemala, another geologically volatile Latin American country, villagers fled and the international airport was closed after the Pacaya volcano erupted close to its capital.

Icelandic volcano forced airports in Ireland to close for a fourth day

SHANNON, Ireland, May 7 Ash drifting from an Icelandic volcano forced airports in Ireland to close for a fourth day Friday, disrupting plans for thousands of air travelers.Airports in Shannon, Sligo, Knock, Gal way, Donegal and Kerry were temporarily closed because of a huge ash cloud drifting from recent activity in Eyjafjallajoekull volcano, CNN reported.”The restrictions are required as the increased level of recent volcanic activity has created a massive ash cloud stretching 1,000 miles long and 700 miles wide,” the Irish Aviation Authority said.

Northerly winds were keeping most of the ash cloud over the Atlantic Ocean, the IAA statement said, but the size of the cloud has increased and “is encroaching on Irish airspace along the west coast of Ireland.”Airports in Ireland, Northern Ireland and western Scotland were closed earlier this week because of the ash. Last month, ash from the volcanic eruption disrupted European air travel for six days.

Euro control, Europe’s air traffic management agency, said the ash accumulation poses a new navigational obstacle because the cloud is climbing to 35,000 feet into the typical cruising altitude of transatlantic aircraft, The Daily Telegraph reported. Until recently, the ash was below 20,000 feet.Euro control said Thursday it would reroute flights between Europe and North America to avoid flying over the ash cloud off Ireland’s west coast.(UPI)

Katla volcano showing signs of going the coughing will erupt

Not to mention the dust caused by the eruption of volcanic Eyjafjallajökull Europe disappeared from the air, a mountain which is also located in Iceland already showing signs of going the coughing will erupt. “Learn from history, the eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajökull an impact on the surrounding mountains,” said the volcano expert Clive Oppenheimer, University of Cambridge home.The same thing, as The Sun proclaimed Sunday (18/4/2010), also said Dr. Dougal Jerram. “The eruption will be sustained even months,” said the expert from the Department of Earth Sciences University of Durham’s.So from that, the European fixed set of high vigilance regarding volcanoes in Iceland are.

Eyjafjallajökull Skogar located in the north, Iceland, has a height of 1666 meters or 5466 feet. In the note up to 1100 years back, this mountain has erupted four times ie in 920, 1612, and between 1821 and 1823. Because the area covered by a vast frozen, the eruptions caused the great ice avalanches.Actually, this year, has twice erupted Eyjafjallajökull ie on Saturday (20 / 3) and Wednesday (14 / 4). Pad eruptions in March, approximately 500 residents forced to evacuate.

Katla mountain which was situated close to Eyjafjallajökull aka “only” eight miles to the west, according to the experts to have greater strength when they erupt. Impacts arising from these eruptions are flooding the ice avalanches in the area.

updated

The dramatic volcanic eruption that belched out the ash plume responsible for grounding much of Europe entered a new phase Monday  producing less smoke but bubbling with lava and throwing up chunks of molten rock.Less ash is potentially good news for stranded travelers, but scientists who are monitoring the mountain’s explosion warn the eruption is not finished, and may still set off other eruptions at nearby volcanoes.The first sighting of glowing magma in the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was made on Monday, though the lava is not flowing down the mountain, Icelandic geologists said.

“It is sputtering and bubbling and will probably create a cone formation” as the lava spills over and freezes into rock, said Kristin Vogfjord, geologist at Iceland’s Met Office in Reykjavik.The volcanic eruption has been particularly explosive because it has surged under a 200 meter- (yard-) thick glacier. Melting ice pouring into the crater helped create plumes of ash that rose as far as nine kilometers (5.5 miles) into the air.

Now that the crater ice has mostly melted away, the ash cloud has decreased to below three kilometers (1.8 miles) in height, though the eruption continues. “The plume is lower but the tremors are slowly increasing, which means more magma is flowing,” said Vogfjord.

She is one of several dozen geoscientists and meteorologists who are monitoring Eyjafjallajokull’s violent moods.Seismometers and GPS stations are planted close to and around the volcano to measure tremors and land movement that can herald eruptions.

The GPS units  plastic cylinders on short poles  show the land around Eyjafjallajokull has swollen as much as 8 centimeters (3 inches) in recent months and then contracted slightly following the eruption, much like a bubble popping.

The seismometers, all of which are connected to computers and relay information automatically to a central data center in Reykjavik, check for tremors which indicate that magma is breaking through the crust to surface at the crater.The sound of these tremors can now be heard up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the mountain.

Vogfjord said some the instruments are vulnerable to the ash, however, and may break down.The ash, made up of sand and tiny abrasive glass-like particles, is very fine and can penetrate machines like computers and cameras — and, officials fear, jet engines.

That makes flying dangerous because the ash tends to stick to a jet engine’s interior parts, such as the turbines, where it melts to form a glassy coating.

Vogfjord’s team also monitors the volcano with the help of satellite imaging, a radar beam from the airport that sees anything above an altitude of three kilometers (1.8 miles), as well as Coast Guard flights when weather permits.While the current eruption may be stabilizing, geologists warn that any further ones on Iceland could again bring European aviation to a standstill. Even a volcano that is not covered by a glacier can shoot the same abrasive ash to altitudes used by commercial airliners.

That happened in 2000 at Mount Hekla and in 2004 in Grimsvotn, both located north of the current eruption. The difference then was that the wind carried the ash to unpopulated polar regions northeast of Iceland, rather than southeast to Europe’s main air travel hubs.Besides Mount Hekla, which is typically active every 10 years, scientists are also closely watching the Oraefajokull volcano and the massive Katla, both of which are under glaciers.

“The activity of one volcano sometimes triggers the next one, and Katla has been active together with Eyjafjallajokull in the past,” said Pall Einarsson, professor of geophysics at the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland.The glacier over Katla is more than twice the thickness of Eyjafjallajokull’s, so its eruption would produce a vastly larger plume of ash and possibly ground flights for a much longer period of time.So far, Katla shows no signs of activity, but it explodes roughly once a century and its last eruption was in 1918, causing massive flooding, and lasted for a year.

plane carrying two people has crashed near a house close to Morton

MORTON, Wash.  A single-engine plane carrying two people has crashed near a house close to Morton, Wash., southwest of Mount Rainier.

Lewis County sheriff’s deputies say the Cirrus SR22 clipped several trees before crashing into the driveway of a house along State Highway 508 west of Morton on Friday evening.

A man was reported dead at the scene. A seriously injured woman has been airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, arriving about 10 p.m. Neither was immediately identified.Witness Jim Ecklund tells KOMO-TV the low-flying plane flew over his house and crashed near his neighbor’s home. He says the plane was low enough for him to see the pilot. Then he heard a loud boom.The cause of the crash is under investigation.

LEGAZPI Philippine volcano gets louder, could erupt soon

mountain LEGAZPI

LEGAZPI, Philippines  Philippine troops on Monday pressed the last 3,000 villagers who have refused to heed government warnings to leave the danger zone around a volcano that experts say is ready to erupt.Tens of thousands of people have already been evacuated from the foothills of Mayon, which on Monday emitted lava fountains, powerful booming noises and other signs of an approaching eruption. But authorities are having trouble keeping villagers away from their homes and farms, said Gov. Joey Salceda.”There are people who have been evacuated three times, and we sigh: ‘You again?’ ” said Salceda of central Albay province. “We’ve been playing cat and mouse with them.”

After a week of puffing out ash and sending bursts of lava trickling down its steep slopes, the 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) mountain overlooking the Gulf of Albay and Legazpi city shook with nearly 2,000 volcanic earthquakes and tremors between Sunday and Monday, state volcanologists said.

The emission of sulfur dioxide – an indication of magma rising inside the volcano – jumped to 6,000 tons per day from the normal 500, said the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. It also reported “audible booming and rumbling sounds” in the eastern flank of the volcano, accompanied by intensified crater glow at night.

Lava fountains bursting from the cone-shaped volcano overnight rose 650 feet (200 meters) in the air, the institute said.Scientists raised the alert level Sunday to one step below a hazardous eruption, saying one was possible within days. The only higher level is when a major eruption is already in progress.

Army troops and police added more patrols to enforce a five-mile (eight-kilometer) exclusion zone around the mountain, Salceda said. The area is about 210 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Manila.

More than 44,000 residents were given sleeping mats and food inside school buildings, gyms and other emergency shelters, but some have still been spotted checking on their farms in the prohibited zone.About 3,000 more villagers have held out, staying behind on the fringes of the danger zone out of concern for their homes and belongings. Many have been evacuated only to come back to tend to farms and property.

Army troops have been deployed to persuade them to move to safety, said Jukes Nunez, a disaster management official.”We won’t bodily carry them away because that will violate their rights,” Nunez told The Associated Press. “But we’ve sent troops to persuade and nag them nonstop to move to safer areas.”Scientists said red hot lava flows had reached three miles (five kilometers) from the crater.

A major eruption could trigger pyroclastic flows – superheated gas and volcanic debris that race down the slopes at very high speeds, vaporizing everything in their path. More extensive explosions of ash could drift toward nearby towns and cities. The provincial capital of Legazpi is about nine miles (15 kilometers) away.

In Mayon’s other eruptions in recent years, pyroclastic flows had reached up to four miles (six kilometers) from the crater, Salceda said.”The probability of survival in an eruption is zero if you’re in the danger area. The solution is obviously distance,” .Mayon last erupted in 2006, when about 30,000 people were moved. Another eruption in 1993 killed 79 people.The first recorded eruption was in 1616 but the most destructive came in 1814, killing more than 1,200 people and burying a town in volcanic mud. The ruins of the church in Cagsawa have become an iconic tourist spot.In 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded in the northern Philippines in one of the biggest volcanic eruptions of the 20th century, killing about 800 people.