Volcanos

Roundup of Global Volcanic Activity:

Shiveluch (Kamchatka): Activity at the volcano remains elevated. The lava dome extrudes currently 2 lobes of viscous lava, a larger one on the NW side and a smaller one on the SE side, which seems to have appeared around 16 Feb. The active parts of the dome suffer frequent small to moderate-sized avalanches (mainly from the NW side). Bright glow can be seen at night. A larger collapse on 18 Feb caused a pyroclastic flow that reached a length of approx. 3 km and an ash plume that rose to 23,000 ft (7 km) altitude.

Kelud (East Java): The volcano itself remains relatively calm and produces only a degassing plume. So far, no clear picture has been available about what exactly is going on at the crater itself (e.g. whether a new lava dome is forming). The biggest problem at the moment are lahars, mud flows that form when rain water mixes and remobilizes loose deposits. These mud flows can carry boulders of meter size and are extremely destructive (imagine flowing cement with mixed-in large debris of all sorts). It is estimated that approximately 50 million cubic meters of tephra deposits from the 13 Feb eruption could be remobilized by the rains in the coming days, weeks and months to come. Areas most at risk are river valleys and their river banks.

Kilauea (Hawai'i): (19 Feb) 43 earthquakes were strong enough to be located beneath Kilauea Volcano in the past 24 hours - 9 of them were on the south flank faults. The tiltmeter at Pu`u `O`o recorded the start of DI deflation tilt at 9 pm yesterday - around 14.5 hours after the summit DI deflation tilt.