Posted on 05/16/2006 8:53:30 AM PDT by cogitator
Since Merapi is in the news, here's a few more pictures. The Washington Post had an amazing shot of the pyroclastic flows that came down the mountain yesterday, but I can't link to it. If you want to see it, go to the Washington Post home page, search on "Merapi", and look for the photo entitled "Mount Merapi Erupts with Clouds of Gas : May 15: Smoke billows from Mount Merapi volcano in Central Java, Indonesia". The photo below (which is from Shanghai Daily, so I'm not sure if it will always show up) is similar:
The image below is from the NASA Earth Observatory; Merapi was quiet when it was captured, so in the big image it's actually easy to find Semeru's plume. The source link will take you to the page with the big (3 MB) image.
** ping **
Great pic, cogitator!
Great pics, and thanks for the link to the WP..
Off topic...but have you seen anything lately on what happening in Monserat, I think is it..That's the Caribbean island that was buried by the volcano and the pyroclastic flow some years back..
regards
Ken
If that flow were a few degrees over, the camera poistion would have a "very interesting" perspective for a while
Then it would be wiped out.
It's still got low-level activity, and the population, down about 3/4 from before the eruptions started, all essentially lives at the northern end of the island now. I actually have a friend that bought a villa there, and he invited me to visit. It'd be a lot of fun but not currently a good fit for my schedule or budget.
The volcano still has a growing dome (like St. Helens), and thus there's a threat of pyroclastic flows. But the threat to the population is pretty low, because just about everybody has moved away from it - what used to be the main city, Plymouth, is completely abandoned. However, it could still roast a foolhardy tourist (so I shouldn't go there on vacation!)
I just checked the archives of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (the Web site is working better now than on past visits in previous years), and there were some minor pyroclastic flows in April. So it's still active.
I also found a link to a cool map that shows where it's safe to be (and not be). For people living there, I don't know where the airplanes land, or if it's all traffic by boat now.
Many thanks for the info, and cool links...years ago, I spent two weeks on St. Lucia, which has some volcanic activity, including a "dive-through" volcano to a mud bath, sauna, and a golf course on one end of the island that abuts an area of ociasional volcanic seepage..literally, "out-of-bounds" there is a lava pit..
Oops!!..in my #6.."dive-through" should read "DRIVE THROUGH"..sorry for the typo..
I'm not as sorry as anyone who might have tried it...
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