Small explosions at Soufriere Hills

There were a number of small explosive events at Soufriere Hills in Montserrat in the past few days. Small ash columns of ~5,000 feet were produced, likely caused by some degassing or interaction with water of the andesite dome at the top of the volcano. The director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory says there is little concern for heightened activity. The volcano has been erupting off-and-on since 1995 and these eruptions are just part of the ebb-and-flow of this period of activity.

More like this

Bárðarbunga is arguably the scariest of the 30 or so active volcanoes in Iceland. Extreme volcanoes don't always have extreme eruptions, but they are scary because they have the capability for extreme events, uniquely so. Bárðarbunga - under the ice cap at the top left - from Google maps It is…
Pumice is rock that is ejected from a volcano, and has so much gas trapped in it that it can float. So when a pumice-ejecting volcano (not all volcanoes produce pumice) goes off near a body of water, you can get a raft of rock floating around for quite some time. By and by, water replaces the gas…
Even at the most extreme edges of the flow of stuff out of the volcano Pompeii, at the far edge of the mud and ash that came from the volcano's explosion, the heat was sufficient to instantly kill everyone, even those inside their homes. And that is how the people at Pompeii, who's remains were…
As the three remaining readers may have noticed, I've been a bit too busy to blog for a couple of weeks. But other blogs go on, and right now, over on SciBling "Eruptions" there is a fascinating live discussion in the comments on the possibility of an imminent eruption in Eyjafjallajökull.…