The latest article really did invite a sequel as the short time at my disposal and the dearth of publicly available material led to it not being on as solid scientific foundation as we like them to be. This will be set right now. Early this week there was a letter in my mail, physical…
It is inevitable that the higher we get in this series, the more speculative our choices may seem. If everything was known about every volcano, identifying and motivating the choice of the ten most dangerous ones would be a relatively simple matter. As it is, our selections have to be based on what meagre…
Last month, prompted by VC-reader VerboselyLaconic’s observation about the volcanoes of Colombia and Ecuador seemingly exhibiting a trend to suffer flank collapses in a preferred direction, we invited our readers to search worldwide in order to establish whether or not this was a general observation or if it only applied to the volcanoes mentioned by…
Lake Toba is a beautiful place. The largest and deepest lake in Southeast Asia, it contains an island (Samosir) almost the size of Singapore – the fifth largest lake island in the world, and the largest island-within-an-island. Samosir contains two smaller lakes, Lake Sidihoni and Lake Aek Natonang – the former even contains its own…
It has often been pointed out that the deadliest volcano is the one you did not know about. This is our dilemma. When you try to identify the potentially most dangerous ones, by necessity you have to go out on a limb to find those that are not well known nor well studied and there…
Before I start on the subject of this post, we would like to thank everyone for their input and support of VC recently! It is good to see so many of our contributors, old and new, and some of the input is truly staggering in its quality. Thank you! Also, we will let the…
Few volcanoes on the planet represent such an awesome sight as the majestic Mount Cameroon. It stretches from the edge of the Atlantic at Bakingili Beach and reaches an astounding height of 4040 meters. Due to its prominence it is regularly dusted with snow at the top. Mount Cameroon, or as I am used to…
A couple of days ago, VC reader VerboselyLaconic posted an interesting observation about the Andean Volcanos of Equador and Columbia. Here is what he said: It seems almost a rule that when they erupt BIG, it is a lateral blast, and all but a few of them blow in a westerly direction. Now, I have…
As we labour to rescue what can be saved, we shall continue from where we last were. Here again is that fabulous post by Albert, alas, without the original reader comments: Volcanic eruptions have become major attractions, and even rather minor eruptions can make front page news. In modern days, any volcano deciding to erupt…
About 50 km from the capital of Manila (pop 1,652,171, urbanised area 22 million+) lies Taal Volcano, near the middle of the 25 to 30 km wide Taal Caldera which was formed by a series of very large eruptions between 140,000 – 5,380 BP, the last of which has been identified as a VEI 6…