Wednesday, May 07, 2008


Via National Geographic News.
May 6, 2008—After 9,000 years of silence, Chile's Chaitén volcano (pictured on May 3) is erupting with lava, ash—and lightning.

Since the volcano awoke on May 2, it has continued erupting intermittently, blanketing the area in ash and forcing more than 4,000 people to flee.

The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a "dirty thunderstorm."

The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.
What an unbelievable photograph. Simply stunning.

Photograph by Carlos Gutierrez/UPI/Landov


Ali said...



xan said...

That is indeed fact this volcano is something I think would be getting a lot more attention if it weren't for politics in the US and hideous disasters in Burma. A major eruption from a site that hasn't had one in several thousand years? Nobody seems to have any explanation for this.

Or maybe somebody does and it isn't getting reported because of politics in the US and...well, all that. Glad they seem to have evacuated everyone at any rate.

Caminante said...

Wow. I was supposed to go Ambato, Ecuador in February but because it is very close to the active and erupting Volcán Tungurahua (5016m), my hosts were concerned about all the ash; inhaling too much of it raises one's chances of getting pneumonia. So I ended up going to the north, close to the Colombian border before it erupted in its own way not too long afterwards.