62: Tofua volcano erupts, sending ash cloud 3,000 feet above Tonga Islands?

 August 14, 2012TONGA A “new” volcano just entered the watch list: Out in the Pacific, a pilot observed an ash cloud rising from Tofua volcano to 3,000 ft (ca. 1 km) in the Tonga Islands at 04:42 GMT, VAAC Wellington reports. The volcano last erupted in 2009.Volcano Discovery.  Historical background:  Tofua Caldera, in Tonga, is the summit caldera of a steep-sided composite cone that forms Tofua Island. Tofua Island is in Tonga’s Ha’apai island group. Pre-caldera activity is recorded by a sequence of pyroclastic deposits and lavas constituting the older cone, followed on the northern part of the island by froth lavas or welded and unwelded ignimbrite. Following caldera collapse, lavas were erupted from the northern part of the island and the caldera-rim fissure zone, scoria and lavas from the caldera-wall fissure zones, pyroclastics and lavas from intracaldera cones, and recent pyroclastic fall deposits on the outer cone. Eruptive products are mainly basaltic andesites and andesites, plus occasional dacite flows within the older cone. A post-caldera cone with fumarolic activity (Lofia) is situated in the northern part of the caldera; a crater lake with 500 m (1,600 ft) depth occupies most of the remainder. Most historical eruptions have been small explosions from Lofia cone along the northern caldera rim. The eruptions of 1958-59 caused most of the islanders to evacuate for a year or more. –Wikipedia
Volcano eruption awaits additional confirmation and may have been brush fire: Matangi

9 Responses to 62: Tofua volcano erupts, sending ash cloud 3,000 feet above Tonga Islands?

  1. More volcanic activity northeast of New Zealand. This is in a line with the volcanoes on or near North Island and the one that spewed all of that floating pumice a few days ago. that portion of the Ring of Fire is getting a little too hot for my tastes.


  2. tess says:

    I agree David.. I think people forget it is a ring of fire.. there’s movement in all directions at the moment..


    • There is movement all around the Ring, tess, and it is all interconnected. The geologists are just now starting to go public with the theory that earthquakes in one place can trigger them in another, but if you picture what is going on under the earth it is easy to see. Faults in the earth are places where there is a delicate balance of pressures versus movement, and if that balance changes for any reason you have an earthquake. Since the shock waves of major quakes travel all through the earth, every time we have a major quake there is a slight change in that balance elsewhere. This is why it is pretty common that when a fault ruptures in one spot it ends up starting a chain reaction than can cause a cascading rupture along hundreds of miles of fault and across related faults. I won’t belabor the point as you can see where I’m going with this, but even slight changes can have much larger consequences.


      • Brandon says:

        I read an article on Believer’s Central called Cosmophobia and 2012. It talked once again about NASA debunking the 2012 doomsday as fear mongering nonsense fueled by overexaggerated press releases, YouTube videos, and so forth. They mentioned children thinking about committing suicide and actually doing it in anticipation of the world’s end. I know you also don’t believe it will end in 2012 but is it possible we’re worried about nothing and that we’re overexaggerating? I would think NASA would tell us, correct???


      • We should never worry about what we can’t control. This is a big planet and it is never the same for a second. It’s challenged constantly by dynamism. Change is the only constant in our world. We should all keep that in mind.


  3. Brandon says:

    How come is it that NASA doesn’t know this? Why are you the only one?




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