The Weekly Update #10 (15/4/16)

Welcome to a double edition of the Weekly Update. Following last weeks “incident”, where my cat Jeff somehow contrived to destroy my modem, this week we are covering two weeks worth of VAAC reports, so without too much preamble we will plow ahead. A slight change to how I have chosen to display the images this…

Jan Mayen – The Fiery end of Civilization

The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen is situated north of Iceland. It might be the only place on earth where no one yet has bothered to find anything valuable. Except for a short stint in the early twentieth century when Norwegian trappers hunted polar bears and blue fox. Jan Mayen services as a combined polar…

Reinterpreting Grimsvötn

In the previous part we learned that Grimsvötn indeed is able to produce large scale eruptions as we looked closer into the Saksunarvatn tephras. The first part can be found by following the link below. http://www.volcanocafe.org/grimsvotn-the-saksunarvatn-tephras/ This time we will look into what this new information might mean for the future eruptions of Grimsvötn. But…

All Calderas are not Calderas

Sometimes our readers send in questions to us that literally sends the writers into a frenzy of volcanic exploration. This week’s question was about if the area between Fort Rock and Chemult in Oregon is indeed a large caldera. The area is situated south of the eastward Cascade volcanic range south of Newberry (Paulina Peak),…

The Aniakchak Earthquakes

Few of our readers have missed the anomalous M6.2 earthquake that occured 20 km WNW of the Aniakchak Caldera. In this article we will go through the details of the earthquake and the possible effects of the main-shock and the series of after-shocks. According to the Alaska Earthquake Center the waveform of the initial 6.2…

The Great American Volcano – Aniakchak

This is a repost of an article from October 28, 2013. The Caribou was standing on the plains 30 kilometers away from the mountain; it had not fled the roaring mountain more than that. After all, the ash was driven by the fierce wind to the north, and where it stood to the west in…

The Friday Update #9 (01/04/2016)

Albert casting a line in Yellowstone yesterday, trying to catch some whoppers! – taken from here   Welcome to another (late) weekly update.  I am sure everyone will agree that yesterday’s big news from Yellowstone deserved a day to be digested. In case anyone did not realize (and many did not), yesterday was April Fool’s day…

Exxon Mobil Corporation buys Yellowstone National Park

(This was Volcanocafe’s 2016 April-fool story. The section at the end explains how the story was designed) Park to be renamed Yellowstone National Resource ExxonMobil to use Yellowstone for geothermal energy It was announced this morning that ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, has bought Yellowstone National Park. The price has not been revealed but…

Pavlof having a Hekla moment

Hekla is famous for its short run-ups prior to eruption, typically the run-up involves a smattering of small earthquakes for an hour or so and then it goes boom. Pavlof has the same nasty habit of not announcing upcoming eruptions. At beast you get a few harmonic tremor episodes in the hours prior to an…

The Late Friday Update #8 (26-03-16)

Welcome to a rather later than usual Friday update.  A rather unfortunate collection of unrelated events meant I did not have an opportunity to sit and write this until half past eight on Saturday evening.  But my tardiness allowed the volcano gods some extra time to put on a show and they obliged with increased…