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- #201
More on the tsunami alert -- some 11,000 evacuated:
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Volcano thread
- Thread starter bjdeming
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #202
Of note, I just learned that one of the deadliest volcanoes in the world -- Mount Awu -- is in Northern Sulawesi, too, and its status was raised along with Ruang's, though this report (autotranslated) is outdated now for Ruang, of course.
The two are not connected -- Indonesia is just loaded with volcanoes.
Awu's most recent VONA on this page is from 2021. The recent alert level increase now has it at Aviation Code Orange.
PS: Latest official release on Awu (autotranslated).
The two are not connected -- Indonesia is just loaded with volcanoes.
Awu's most recent VONA on this page is from 2021. The recent alert level increase now has it at Aviation Code Orange.
PS: Latest official release on Awu (autotranslated).
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- Thread starter
- #203
It's daytime now and responders are in motion (autotranslated; also this). There have been injuries, per this report (autotranslated).
I haven"t yet seen daylight video from the 18th, but news reports say Ruang is still "throwing stones."
By the way, this is Mount RUAng (Sulawesi), not Mount RAUng (Java), which is also on alert status. And in the same vein, Mount MErapi (Java) and deadly Mount MArapi (Sumatra) are also still erupting. Indonesia is a wonderful place for volcanophiles, but it takes some getting used to when you try to follow eruptions.
I haven"t yet seen daylight video from the 18th, but news reports say Ruang is still "throwing stones."
By the way, this is Mount RUAng (Sulawesi), not Mount RAUng (Java), which is also on alert status. And in the same vein, Mount MErapi (Java) and deadly Mount MArapi (Sumatra) are also still erupting. Indonesia is a wonderful place for volcanophiles, but it takes some getting used to when you try to follow eruptions.
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- Thread starter
- #204
Today the volcano looks like a chunk of coal:
It's very difficult to get updated information, both because of the language gap with online searches and because there's always a delay in general public information transmission here apart from the necessary civil defense announcements (this is why, over on Java, citizens formed JALIN Merapi, which was very helpful during the major 2010 eruption).
Media outside Indonesia, of course, follow official sources, of which there are many online, but this delay (which most foreign journalists aren't aware of) affects their coverage -- I was surprised at the number of stories still talking about Level 3 alert and those 828 evacuees!
At least Ruang's earlier low-level activity got those villagers off the island before it went off big-time. Judging from that cam appearance, it's not likely that anyone who might have remained on Ruang Island could have survived.
I don't know how things went on the nearby coast of Tagulandang (presumably the site of last night's report of people being hit by falling stones, as that news also mentions residents heading for high ground).
No mention of tsunami, thankfully. This story (autotranslated) covers the lightning a bit; the experts also say Ruang is not yet stable and they are maintaining the 6-km exclusion zone.
Going by Simon Carn's tweeted figures, this eruption put out roughly 3x the amount in Ruang's 2002 blast, and that is already well on its world tour:
In the thread, too, initial estimate of VEI 4.
It's very difficult to get updated information, both because of the language gap with online searches and because there's always a delay in general public information transmission here apart from the necessary civil defense announcements (this is why, over on Java, citizens formed JALIN Merapi, which was very helpful during the major 2010 eruption).
Media outside Indonesia, of course, follow official sources, of which there are many online, but this delay (which most foreign journalists aren't aware of) affects their coverage -- I was surprised at the number of stories still talking about Level 3 alert and those 828 evacuees!
At least Ruang's earlier low-level activity got those villagers off the island before it went off big-time. Judging from that cam appearance, it's not likely that anyone who might have remained on Ruang Island could have survived.
I don't know how things went on the nearby coast of Tagulandang (presumably the site of last night's report of people being hit by falling stones, as that news also mentions residents heading for high ground).
No mention of tsunami, thankfully. This story (autotranslated) covers the lightning a bit; the experts also say Ruang is not yet stable and they are maintaining the 6-km exclusion zone.
Going by Simon Carn's tweeted figures, this eruption put out roughly 3x the amount in Ruang's 2002 blast, and that is already well on its world tour:
In the thread, too, initial estimate of VEI 4.
- Thread starter
- #205
Another view of the SO2 emission (Kalimantan is Indonesia's part of Borneo): "The eruption of the North Sulawesi Space Volcano is truly spectacular, it can produce SO2 gas this high and can spread to the Kalimantan island area with high concentrations. 16.00 WIB 18/04/2024" (I think it's 18.43 WIB now)
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- #206
BTW, per multiple news stories overnight, "RUAng" (Sulawesi) means "space" or "room." Dr. Google Translate says that "RAUng" (Java) means "roar."
The room roared last night.
The room roared last night.
- Thread starter
- #207
Going with 0.4 Tg, in between Aires and Carn, that's only 2% of Pinatubo's SO2 output in 1991, according to this source (from all accounts, Hunga Tonga's sulfur release was surprisingly low).
- Thread starter
- #208
Four hours ago, ReliefWeb published a UN report on the overall social situation -- no casualties reported to date.
GVP has updated their page through last night's images of "...incandescent material being ejected above the summit, incandescent material on the flanks, and dense ash plumes with lightning rising into dark, nighttime skies."
I didn't see mention of Tagulandang and the ~11,000-person evacuation there in either source, although part of that island is in the 6-km no-go zone. Both websites will probably have more details in coming days, socially and geologically, and both are reliable.
GVP has updated their page through last night's images of "...incandescent material being ejected above the summit, incandescent material on the flanks, and dense ash plumes with lightning rising into dark, nighttime skies."
I didn't see mention of Tagulandang and the ~11,000-person evacuation there in either source, although part of that island is in the 6-km no-go zone. Both websites will probably have more details in coming days, socially and geologically, and both are reliable.
- Thread starter
- #209
This came up in my feed, and I ran it through a translator since there is a transcript. It shows the village of Laingpatehi on the morning of the 18th (it's already 2 a.m., April 19th, there now).
The narration covers information we've already gotten, apart from the fact that 502 people call it home and that several houses were damaged.
Considering that it's only about 2 km from the crater, I expected more destruction. There's heavy ashfall, but not a lot of evidence -- at least to this layperson's eyes -- of wind damage; this doesn't mean that there wasn't a Pinatubo-style pyroclastic flow here, as their effects can be as idiosyncratic as a tornado's, but coupled with the shot of the eruption column and the narrator's description of the summit eruption as "lava bursts," I wonder if that was indeed a plinian lava fountain eruption, rare indeed.
That's probably one of the things the GVP and other volcanologists are investigating now.
And doubly rare (and welcome) if it happened in a populated area and didn't kill anyone. Fingers crossed...
- Thread starter
- #210
Just some news (autotranslated) on Tagulandang. The links to other stories on that page should autotranslate, too.
No casualties are reported, although tephra was thick enough on the western coast to prevent some people from leaving. On the 18th, search-and-rescue teams swept through the area.
No casualties are reported, although tephra was thick enough on the western coast to prevent some people from leaving. On the 18th, search-and-rescue teams swept through the area.
- Thread starter
- #211
Ruang is indeed still unstable (the linked report is through 18.00 local time, I think, and it's 18.24 in Jakarta now):
VISUAL OBSERVATION
The volcano is clearly visible. Observed white and gray smoke from the main crater with medium to thick intensity at a height of around 50-400 meters from the peak. The weather is sunny, the wind is weak to moderate to the south.
OTHER INFORMATION
The equipment has been damaged since April 17 2024 at 20.39 WITA...
-- Source (autotranslated)
- Thread starter
- #212
No more volcano news at the moment, but the PVMBG people came up with such a gosh-darn cute way to do public outreach!
Per Twitter translation:
"ROAR AND SPACE, SIMILAR BUT NOT THE SAME]Mitigation Friends,When the eruption of G. Ruang occurred in Sitaro Regency, North Sulawesi, quite a lot of Mitigation Friends on social media thought that Mican was a typo in writing the name G. Raung as G. Ruang,
Per Twitter translation:
"ROAR AND SPACE, SIMILAR BUT NOT THE SAME]Mitigation Friends,When the eruption of G. Ruang occurred in Sitaro Regency, North Sulawesi, quite a lot of Mitigation Friends on social media thought that Mican was a typo in writing the name G. Raung as G. Ruang,
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- #213
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- #214
Meanwhile, in Iceland...
My layperson guess is that this is not an immediate precursor of volcanism in central Iceland; it's still notable, though:
More on Bardarbunga and the Holuhraun eruption.
Personal note: That Holuhraun eruption was the very first one I followed online, thanks to Dr. Eric Klemetti's blogging in those days (here's just one example; he still does excellent articles at Discovery's Rocky Planet).
Of note, many Icelandic volcanic systems east of the Reykjanes Peninsula have a central caldera set amid swarms of fissures. The Bardarbunga and Askja systems have this structure (and I sometimes wonder if the sill under Svartsengi might be early-stage development along those lines, though none is known on the peninsula).
Anyway, in 2014 there was this incredibly long dike intrusion just before it began, running from under the sea almost all the way to nearby Askja, but the eventual fissure eruption occurred in the Bardarbunga system -- way out in the open country.
This was one of the first times that drones were used to record an eruption for YouTube, etc., distribution. While those 2014-15 videos can't match today's eruption drone views, they were absolutely mind-bending at the time.
And then the Bardarbunga caldera, which sits underneath a glacier, collapsed, just as Kilauea's summit caldera would do in 2018 and for the same reason: emptying out of the magma that had been holding up its floor:
Quite an online experience for me and many others, that 2014-15 Holuhraun eruption.
I can't even begin to speculate about the recent M5-pointer but suspect -- layperson speculation only -- that it's just a relict of the caldera collapse. Ten years isn't that long, to Earth.
My layperson guess is that this is not an immediate precursor of volcanism in central Iceland; it's still notable, though:
More on Bardarbunga and the Holuhraun eruption.
Personal note: That Holuhraun eruption was the very first one I followed online, thanks to Dr. Eric Klemetti's blogging in those days (here's just one example; he still does excellent articles at Discovery's Rocky Planet).
Of note, many Icelandic volcanic systems east of the Reykjanes Peninsula have a central caldera set amid swarms of fissures. The Bardarbunga and Askja systems have this structure (and I sometimes wonder if the sill under Svartsengi might be early-stage development along those lines, though none is known on the peninsula).
Anyway, in 2014 there was this incredibly long dike intrusion just before it began, running from under the sea almost all the way to nearby Askja, but the eventual fissure eruption occurred in the Bardarbunga system -- way out in the open country.
This was one of the first times that drones were used to record an eruption for YouTube, etc., distribution. While those 2014-15 videos can't match today's eruption drone views, they were absolutely mind-bending at the time.
And then the Bardarbunga caldera, which sits underneath a glacier, collapsed, just as Kilauea's summit caldera would do in 2018 and for the same reason: emptying out of the magma that had been holding up its floor:
Quite an online experience for me and many others, that 2014-15 Holuhraun eruption.
I can't even begin to speculate about the recent M5-pointer but suspect -- layperson speculation only -- that it's just a relict of the caldera collapse. Ten years isn't that long, to Earth.
- Thread starter
- #215
Visir interviewed (autotranslated) an IMO spokesperson about Bardarbunga and this morning's quake (I think "rain" is meant in the original as "seismic swarm"):
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- #216
They've dropped Ruang's alert level down a notch, per today's activity list (autotranslated).
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- #217