VolcanoCafe delicacies

We live in a time of volcano famine. Eruptions are hard to come by, and many scheduled events have been postponed until after covid. And the travel restrictions pose insurmountable problems for volcano watchers. By the time we have flown to the imminent eruption, spend two weeks in quarantine in the VC dungeons isolation ward hotel, and went onward to the volcano, the explosion is long past. Perhaps Grimsvotn has already erupted – how would we know? Was it obliged to wear a mask, strong enough to contain the blast? But we know how infectious volcanoes can be. One eruption can lead to a life time of affliction, where every new eruption brings back the symptoms – elevated heart rate, endless staring at unchanging webcams, sleepless nights, incoherent mutterings, vivid dreams of lava flowing through the garden. Yes, volcanoes can be a disease. We have seen the VC-plague years of Leilani, Holuhraun. We have felt the fever of Taal and White Island. We recall the worldwide afflictions of Krakatau and Tambora, and we remember the time when Yellowstone still meant something. Corona is bad. But we have Coronado, Coropuna and Cotopaxi. Our mask is Masaya, our virus is Virgenes. Rendova is our remdesivir. The world does not know – but one day it will, and it will tremble at the tremor. Volcano virology – here we come.

In the mean time, what is there to discuss? In fact, VolcanoCafe has discussed many things related to volcanoes. There has been volcano coffee. Volcano gardening has come up. Volcano art, of course. We have even done quantum volcanology. But in this time of social isolation, how about some volcano cooking?

Volcano cooking does not mean dangling your chimichangas or mars bars into the lava for deep deep frying (also known as carbonization). It means having your volcano – and eat it. Here is a collection of recipes, from a time when VC was used to share recipes. They are from the pre-covid archives and come without any guarantee, warranty, promise, or insurance. Prepare and eat at your own risk. Don’t erupt under the influence of alcohol. But boy, do they look tempting.

LAVA BAGUETTE

Photograph by Lughduniense showing the hot baguette.

Lava Baguette Grand Suchet

  • 2-3 baguettes or several pistolets (smaller sized french baguette buns)
  • 350 grams walnuts
  • 150 grams fresh bread crumbs
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 125-150 ml (extra-virgin) olive oil
  • 2 Tablespoons honey
  • 3-5 red bell peppers – either you roast them, or from a jar, you need about 350 grams
  • 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice or cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 pinch of cinnamon
  • 1 pinch to a teaspoon of salt
  • 1 pinch to a spoonfull  of red chilies, depends on how hot you like it. Tabasco, sambal or Piri-Piri will do too.

If you use fresh bell peppers, you need to prepare those first. Put them on baking paper/tin foil under the grill at 200-220ºC/390-430ºF till they start blistering, look cooked and the skin turns black. Take them out, wrap them in the paper/foil and put the package in a plastic bag that you close and let them cool. Then cut them in parts, remove crown and seeds. If you put them in the plastic bag or any container to cool makes it easy to take off the skin easily.

Now for the preparation of the lava filling: First put the walnuts, bread and garlic in the blender (together with fresh chiles if you use those). When you have what starts to look like a mashed mass, you add oil, honey, red bell peppers, lemon juice, cumin, salt, cinnamon and cumin and blend again till you have what looks like a nice smooth mass.

Put into a tupperware thingy and leave in the fridge overnight so the tastes will mix.

Then cut the baguettes on the side, fold open, and hollow them out a bit and fill with the Grand Suchet Red Hot Lava Sauce. Serve with cold Vulkan Brau.

Lughduniense

Hotspot Cabage

How to make cabbage erupt with flavour and a hint of deep seated magmatic heat?

For 4 people. (You can make it according to your country or spice tolerance)

Half a white/ drumhead/ savoy any sort of cabbage really not red though. Too tough for this treatment.

  • 1 small chorizo sausage loop sliced.
  • Some cooked ham. About half a cup chopped. Spanish or Italian or even English
  • A couple of spring onions/ scallions/ or small red or white whatever to hand.
  • Garlic 1 teaspoon diced or one clove fresh or leave out if you are on a first time date.
  • 1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg.
  • Salt & Black pepper to taste.

Gently fry the Chorizo slices in a little olive oil until the fat runs.

Stir fry the rest of the ingredients until the cabbage is to the texture you like slightly crisp for me but husband likes it well done.

So simple but having this tonight with Oven baked garlic & herb potato wedges (Home made) and grilled pork steaks and sausage with a creamy white wine sauce. (All cooked from scratch. I don’t like ready meals or sauces . I like to know what I am eating!)

The children actually liked eating cabbage this way. You can add more paprika or chillies.  You can in fact just do all kinds of variations on this. Just never, ever boil cabbage to death in salty water. It is a crime against cabbages and gives them a bad smell name.

PS: Always add nutmeg. it takes the smell of cooked cabbage away

Diana Barnes

SAINT BRENDANS FLAMING SURTSEY

Saint Brendans Flaming Surtsey

  • 1 shot Sambuca
  • 1 shot Tia Maria
  • 1 shot Baileys
  • 1 shot Blue Curacao

Layer Sambuca over tia maria in narrow glass and pour a shot of Baileys into one shot glass and blue curacao into another. Place straw into layered tia maria and sambuca and ignite sambuca. Then drink before straw melts and as last dregs of sambuca are being drunk pour in baileys and blue curacao at the same time. These are to be drunk through the straws at the same time.

CARL & LUGHDUNIENSE

FLAMING VOLCANO

Flaming Volcano, the drink of choice for any true volcanoholic.

The drink of choice for any true volcano(alco)holic. It is one for the bar – and for a long weekend with plenty of time for recovery.

This drink is a large tropical cocktail meant to be shared between several people. It should for very many reasons be served with long straws, if not you will have people with burning hair kissing each other. The drink was originally invented in Hawaii in the early fifties by a crafty surfer who wanted a drink to share with his friends. It later became popular in Chile during the time of Augusto Pinochet, probably because they wanted to place him over a Flaming Volcano. The recipé is in centiliters.

  • 3 Silver rum
  • 3 Brandy
  • 3 Dark rum (preferably at 60 percent)
  • 12 Orange juice, or Pineapple-orange juice
  • 6 Squeezed lime or unsweetened lime juice
  • 6 Almond syrup

Put in a blender with two scoops of ice and blend. Pour into the bowl and garnish with pineapple and maraschino cherries, or any other tropical fruit you have at home. Insert a tiny bowl into it with a tad of the 60 percent rum in it, light it up and serve. Serves two people, multiply if you are more people. Friendly hint, test the burning bowls ability to float in the larger bowl beforehand…

KICK’EM GUMBO (serves at least 4)

  • 0.5 kg of pork fillet
  • 0.3 kg of really spicy sausages (high on meat content)
  • 0.3 kg of peeled shrimp
  • 4 tomatoes
  • 1-2 Habañero peppers
  • 1-2 handfulls of peanuts (depending on size of hands)
  • 1-5 pieces of garlic (use according to taste, more is better)
  • 1-2 stalks of celery
  • 1 bell pepper
  • 1 onion
  • 1 item of beef broth or bouillon, cube variety works fine
  • Dill, either frozen or fresh
  • Olive oil or rapeseed oil and a tad of butter
  • White wine, red wine or beer, only use one of the options

Serve with rice, beans or potato

How too

First you need to know what you are going to serve to drink to the Gumbo. It goes equally well with either white or red wine, as well as beer. You should dilute the soup base with the same thing that you end up drinking with the meal, this way the food and the drinks will match perfectly. This works with other dishes too of course.

Start by grinding the peanuts into flour; use a coffee grinder or a blender. In the end you should have 1 to 2 deciliters of peanut flour. If you can’t get really fresh peanuts you should use dry roasted peanuts. The stuff you buy from the Health Food shelf will most likely be mildewed and might cause kidney or liver failure, never eat those. Grind until it is as fine as baking flour. Put in a bowl on the side.

Blend tomatoes, bell pepper, Habañeros, celery and the garlic. Regulate how strong it is by using one or two peppers, if you want it even weaker remove the seeds (I use two with seeds, but it is you who are going to eat) Start with giving the garlic a couple of turns in the blender. When it is creamy and there are no chunks it is done. Pour this into a big enough soup kettle then add the beef broth or bouillon and a dollop of butter and a small amount of olive oil. Heat slowly until it cooks.

Chop up the pork into inch sized cubes. Fry this together with the onion in oil, start by frying the onion for a couple of minutes before adding the pork. Do not fry the pork until it is fried through, then it will get rather stringy.

As the soup base is near cooking it is time to put in the peanut flour. Do not worry about using too little or too much, this will even out when we pour in the wine or beer into the kettle later. As you stir out the peanut butter you will get a lovely roux out of it automatically, and the flavor is much better than if you do it the regular way with wheat flour and butter. Stir it slowly; it should dissolve easily into the soup base. As you start to reach the boiling point the soup will start to thicken, now is the time to add the fried pork and onion.

Wait until the Gumbo start to boil. Now it is time to pour in either wine or beer, do not put in too much, it is better to add as you go. Remember, a Gumbo should be rather on the thick side. Let it simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the chopped sausages and let simmer for half an hour. Taste the Gumbo and add finely cut dill, salt and regular black pepper to taste. Drop down the shrimps and stir, wait 5 more minutes and serve.

If you have any, serve it with garlic bread.

CARL

BOBLUSCONI TIRAMISU

After the conflagration of Vulcanettos (Mudcanoes) in and outside of the city of Fiumicino in Italy we hereby proudly present a dish based on the most likely cause of them. Recipe by Lughduniense.


This is how the finnished Boblusconi Tiramisu should look like.

This is how the finnished Boblusconi Tiramisu should look like.

Ingredients:

  • 250ml strong coffee
  • 4 tablespoons milk
  • 3 tablespoons marsala, grappa or amaretto
  • 2 tablespoons white caster sugar
  • 36 sponge fingers or savoiardi biscuits
  • 200-250 ml of cream
  • 2 spoons of sugar
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2 tablespoons white caster sugar
  • 250g mascarpone cheese
  • 100g Nutella® or any other chocolate sandwich spread, such as dark chocolate or the white variety
  • 1 tablespoon Amaretto
  • 2 egg whites
  • 2 tablespoons white caster sugar
  • cocoa powder and a spoon of ground pistachios to sprinkle the Tiramisu with

Preparation:

  1. Put the caster sugar, coffee, milk, Marsala or Grappa in a bowl and mix. Put the mix in a flat tray and soak the sponge fingers.
  2. Independent of how many forms you use, you need half of the fingers for the first layer and the rest for the second. The recipe is intended for a form of ~20x30cm (9″x13″) and should be enough for 6 people.
  3. Beat the egg yolks with 2 spoons of sugar for about 3 minutes with an electric mixer until pale yellow and slightly foamy. Add the mascarpone cheese and mix for another 2 minutes. Now add Amaretto to the mascarpone mix till you have a homogeneous mass.
  4. Whip the cream until stiff and fluffy and fold it gently into the mascarpone mix.
  5. Whip the egg whites with 2 spoons caster sugar until really stiff (always make sure the bowl and tools you use are absolutely free of fat and oil or you fail). Carefully fold the stiff egg whites into mascarpone mixture.
  6. Take out half and put in another bowl and mix with the Nutella® or chocolate spread of your choice.
  7. Spread the Nutella mixture on top of the soaked sponge fingers. Put the rest of the sponge fingers on top of that first mascarpone layer and spread the other half of the mascarpone mixture over the second layer of sponge fingers. Now the very last bit of mixture you put in the middle of the form and model this into the well known Bob pattern
  8. Sprinkle the Boblusconi Tiramisu with cocoa powder, except the part were Boblusconi is, there you sprinkle very little and add the ground pistaches. Put in the fridge for at least 3 hours before serving.

LUGHDUNIENSE

LAVA PIE LAKE a la NYARAGONGO

Lavapie by Lughduniense

Dough: Easy to make by hand or with a food processor. You need:

  • 125g (4oz) flour
  • 55g (2oz) butter cut in little pieces
  • 30-45ml (2-3 tablespoons) cold water
  • A pinch of salt

Put flour and salt in a bowl, add the butter. Knead till the butter is mixed with the flour but the dough is still lumpy and the butter not yet molten. Mix the water into de dough lumps with a knife so it all will stick together, then wrap dough into plastic wrapper and put in the fridge 10-15 minutes and go have a drink in the VC Bar.

If you are lazy, you put flour, butter and salt in the food processor and mix till no butter pieces are visible. Add water bit by bit till all sticks together, then wrap dough into cling film. Put in the fridge 10-15 minutes and go have a drink in the VC Bar.

Now for the finishing chocolate lava floor touch: this you need to prepare on beforehand because the molten chocolate needs to become hard again before you use it. Put a pan in another pan filled with water, put in a bit of milk and butter till the butter is molten and add 150 grams of dark chocolate and batter. Put backing paper or a silicone mat on a flat surface and poor the molten chocolate on it to form a circular blotch that’s 50-75% smaller than the cake form you use. I’ll come back to the chocolate later, for now just let it become hard.

For the Pumpkin filling:

  • 750g (1lb 10oz) pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut in pieces
  • 140g white caster sugar or honey
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 25g butter, melted
  • 175ml milk
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp fresh nutmeg, grated

Put pumpkin parts in a large pan, add water till covered and let it boil. Once boiling put the lid and simmer until tender, ~15 minutes (meanwhile, have a drink in the Sheepy Dalek Bar). Remove water and let the pumpkin cool.

Heat the oven to 180Cº (160ºC fan, gas oven 4). Now get the pastry from the fridge put some flour on a surface and roll out dough till wide enough to fill a pastry form or tart tin. Put in the oven till it just starts to look a bit golden brown. Take it out and let it cool a bit.

Now put the oven to 220ºC (200ºC fan oven, gas 7). (No drink this time, sorry.) Meanwhile crush the pumpkin pieces through a sieve into a bowl. In bowl two, you put sugar, melted butter, milk eggs, nutmeg, salt, and cinnamon and mix well. Add it to the pumpkin mash and mix.

Now you can pour the pumpkin mash into the pie dough and put the whole in the oven for 10 minutes; then lower temp to 180ºC (160ºC fan oven, gas 4). Let the pie in the oven for another 35-40 minutes till the pumpkin mash has set.

Take it out to cool off until slightly lukewarm, in the meantime: why not have another drink in the Sheepy Dalek Bar…

If you are back just in time before the pie has cooled completely, take a hammer and smash the chocolate pancake to pieces, you can also use a knife to carve out nice jigsaw pieces. Now you need to put the pieces one by one on top of the pie with space between them to leave the orange lava shine through between the parts, if the pie is still just warm enough the pieces will nicely melt onto the pumpkin surface, if still too hot they will melt into a chocolate floor fully covering the lava.

Sprinkle with Brandy, Sambuca or whatever you fancy as long as it burns well and serve flambé (have something ready to cover it with in case the pie will catch flames), if you like you can also use a cake sparkler set alight for an extra festive light show effect.

LUGHDUNIENSE

Rhyolite Stew

rhyolite stew

3 – 4 servings

  • 1 lb. lean pork, diced and cooked
  • 1 can (15 oz.) diced tomatoes
  • 1 can (8 oz.) tomato paste
  • 2 cup water
  • ¼ cup rice
  • ½ med shallot, chopped fine (or 1 tbsp dried shallots)
  • 1 green onion, all of it, chopped fine
  • 1 med carrot, sliced thin

    1 rib celery, diced

    ½ small zucchini, sliced to preference

  • ½ tsp. Tuscan Sunset herb mix from Penzeys Spices (a mix of 8 herbs, starting with basil and oregano)
  • 2 tbsp. green pepper, chopped fine (or pepper of your choice)
  • 1/8 tsp. salt
  • 1/8 tsp. Lemon Pepper blend from Penzeys Spices (a mixture of finely ground lemon peel and pepper)
  • 1 tsp. dried parsley
  • Mix all ingredients in pan. Simmer until rice is cooked.

Sources:

Fran

Chocolate volcanoes

We are now moving beyond the VC archives into the less refined kitchen of the internet. This one is from the BBC, by Paul Hollywood from The Great British Quake Bake Off. Do we need to point out that ‘VC’ originally stood for Volcan-Chocolat? Those were the days when we could still study high-calorie eruptions! Nowadays everything is slimmed down – even eruptions.

Paul’s version of the classic chocolate fondant is all about timing. Don’t let the puddings bake to the point that their surface begins to crack, as this means the centres are starting to cook.

Preparation time: over 2 hours

Cooking time: 10 to 30 mins

Makes 6 individual puddings

Dietary: Vegetarian

Ingredients

  • 2-3 tbsp cocoa powder, for dusting
  • 165g/5¾oz dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa solids), chopped into small pieces
  • 165g/5¾oz unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus extra for greasing
  • 3 medium free-range eggs
  • 3 medium free-range egg yolks
  • 85g/3oz caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp plain flour
  • double cream, to serve

Method
Grease six small pudding moulds with butter and dust the insides with cocoa powder, then refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water (do not let the bowl touch the water). Set aside to cool slightly.

Using an electric whisk, whisk the eggs, egg yolks and caster sugar together for several minutes until a thick, pale mousse-like consistency.

Carefully fold the cooled melted chocolate and butter into the egg and sugar mix. Finally fold in the flour carefully so as not to knock any air out of the mixture.

Divide the mixture equally between the prepared moulds. Place in the fridge for at least two hours or until firm. You can make the puddings up to 24 hours in advance and leave them in the fridge until you are ready to cook them.

Preheat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/400F/Gas 6. Place the puddings on a baking tray and bake for eight minutes, or until the puddings are risen but not cracked.

Turn out the puddings on to individual plates and serve, with pouring cream.

Volcano roll


Doesn’t this sound perfect? Follow the link for a recipe for
Volcanic sushi

Volcano cake

A must-have for any volcanically active birthday child. An easy recipe in many steps from the volcanically active BBC

More?

Have we missed something? Drop us a note – or better, the recipe. Enjoy!

141 thoughts on “VolcanoCafe delicacies

  1. It took me a moment to figure out that this wasn’t a an aprils fools article, I need to get our more….
    This looks fantastic, I will have to try some of these out at some point.

  2. Some of these may cause unentended ‘eruptions’! 😉 Some very creative ideas. Going to have ago. Thank you.

  3. My recipe for prunes jubilee might qualify – it was served at a bad taste party in 1991. Sculpt a volcano with licorice ice cream and sprinkle heavily with chunks of licorice candy to simulate the sort of cinder cones so prominent in our Oregon landscape. Soak the prunes in 95% ethanol from the lab, or everclear if you don’t have access to that sort of lab..Pour the flaming prunes into the crater of your volcano.

    • Do you need to use ethanol or would brandy or a liqueur work?

      • It’s the capstone for bad taste party so it would need to be really bad brandy.

        • lol. I was thinking that with a few tweaks you could make a decent desert along those lines ….. 😀

    • Licorice? Prunes? One feels that the effects on the nether regions of the digestive system could reach VEI5

  4. Flaming Surtsey !!

    circa 1990. Extended family Christmas gathering at MIL’s. As comparative new-comer, I’m happy to sit on periphery, willing to ferry empty bowls, dishes & cutlery to sink area to be tidied before going into dish-washer or be hand-washed…

    ( It’s not Tetris, but I’d the happy knack of neatly packing ~20% more stuff into MIL’s dish-washer *and* having it all emerge clean… )

    Intrepid Volunteer attempts to light their slosh of brandy on BIG Christmas Pud.
    Take #2: Volunteer attempts to light fresh slosh of brandy on BIG Christmas Pud.
    Take #3: Volunteer attempts to light fresh slosh of brandy on BIG Christmas Pud.
    Take #4: Volunteer attempts to light fresh slosh of brandy on BIG Christmas Pud.
    Take #5: Yeah, right…

    So, I’m over by the sink, keeping an increasingly wary eye on proceedings, when mega-Pud’s surfeit of accelerant finally, finally ignites, flares head-high.

    I smile.
    I turn, grab kitchen’s CFC extinguisher off wall. Bracket clip proves stronger than fixings, so that came too. Removing safety pin, I advance on screaming melee. Douse infernal Pud and adjacent uber-posh table-cloth with one (1) precise spiral squirt of CFC. Okay, a couple of wine-glasses went over, but ‘omelettes & eggs’…

    Ignition to extinguishing, under five seconds.
    Extended family, speechless.
    My Wife’s grin, priceless…
    😉 😉 😉

    We opened kitchen door to garden, ran extract fan on high to clear air. Served a round of drinks to settle nerves. Pud had acquired a thin rind of ‘crackling’, but was otherwise okay-ish.

    No good deed goes un-punished: MIL, being MIL, complained about the small hole I’d torn in her kitchen wall when urgently grabbing the CFC. And, yes, blamed me for the ensuing stain & scar on table-cloth and table…

  5. If while partaking in these delights, we all wish very hard, maybe a volcano will erupt.

    Of course this is 2020 so don’t be too surprised if the end problem is server overload and how you moderate 17 thousand comments a day, by year end 🙂

    • Lurk had a story about an easter egg hunt where they found an egg from the hunt a year before. That probably had a small appropriate to some volcanoes I know. The mud geysers of Yellowstone come to mind.

    • Just another plugg adjustment??
      But short after the very deep intrusion??? quakes under Vatnajökull the other day. May be a run up for something exciting!!

      • I would say business as usual. This one was completely expected and follows the previous pattern perfectly. Previously I have tried to match the deep quakes with these larger quakes, but it seems like the timing is quite random. I did notice however, that in the days before this quake, there was an increase in “popcorn quakes”, small ticks in the KIS drumplot, too small to register as quakes. I have seen this happen several times before the M4.8 quakes. It’s like the ring fault is creaking a bit just before it goes.

        • Thanks Tomas, for interesting info. Do you know if Barda (and Grimsvotn) is inflating these days? Cannot find the GPS plots myself.

          • I dont know a whole lot about what is typical of Bardarbunga eruptions, but from what I have been able to find it is not likely to do another holuhraun any time soon, probably near future activity will be under the ice cap and of smaller scale. Grimsvotn looks more promising for more frequent activity in the coming decades, hopefully it finally escapes its icy prison and erupts some liquid lava 🙂

          • I think Grimsvötn is very close to the next eruption. Bárðarbunga is probably refilling since the Holuhraun eruption, but it doesn’t show up as a clear inflation signal in the GPS data. Personally I think that the plug is being pushed back up and this causes quakes on the ring fault. The movement of the plug allows BB to refill without inflating like a balloon. It would be interesting to see some radar measurements of the caldera floor, but I haven’t seen anything like that since the eruption.

            One interesting thing about this last quake is that the KIS drumplot did not go completely silent afterwards like it usually does. There are still a lot of tiny blips, so maybe there is another one incoming.

          • Given how similar in scale Holuhraun and fissure 8 were, is there actually any similarity in how Bardarbunga is behaving compared to Kilauea?

            I have always thought of Bardarbunga being like Mauna Loa, and Grimsvotn being like Kilauea, the latter is young and more active with higher supply, the former is much older and typically has larger eruptions with long buildup, but I dont know if that is actually a realistic comparison.

          • They have very little in common. Kilauea does not repeat itself, makes use of its rift, is effusive, etc. Grimsvotn is more predictable, does not do rifts (Laki being the exception), does not do much lava, etc. Neither do Bardarbunga and Mauna Loa have much in common. Even Hekla may be closer.

          • I think to be fair if there wasnt a glacier above then Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga would also be almost completely effusive, well maybe not in 2011, but Kilauea has done eruptions like that in its past too. I do see what you mean though, it was more as a general comparison but maybe the similarity just isnt there at all beyond the lava being basically the same.

            If there is one volcano in Hawaii that looks like Hekla it is Hualalai, not Kilauea or Mauna Loa.

          • Hekla is very young. Make it several times bigger and the shape resembles Mauna Loa. Eruptipn style is a different matter.

          • The only diffrence in eruptive style is viscosity. Otherwise they are quite similar in eruption. Both likes to do large fast lava eruptions with spectacular fiissure fountains as opening. Mauna Loa is far hotter and more fluid.
            But Hekla maybe a ” mini flood andesite” when she erupts.
            Hekla is well known for crazy effusion rates. As well as Mauna Loa is too like in 1950 and certainly the ”Panaewa” eruption of Mauna Loa that may have produced 12 km3 of basalt in a few weeks or months. But Hekla 1947 – 1948 was crazy the first day ” Flood Andesite ” perhaps

          • Hualalai will be terrifying when it erupts again!
            Eruption rates of 100 s of cubic meters a second of hot highly fluid alkaline basalt. Kailua Kona is totaly doomed on that steep slope. They are toast in the future.
            The 1800 s lava channels are amazing the lava goes so fast in it!

          • Kailua Kona is probably relatively safe, it is actually on late pleistocene ground shielded from more recent eruptions by the cones creating the modern summit. Everywhere else is quite in danger though. The volcano also typically erupts about 1-3 km3 of lava per eruptive episode, but all activity added up since 1650 equals to about 0.5 km3, theres still a lot to go, the next eruption could be big…

  6. Some tasty things to try there, looking good.
    For the chili lovers among you, there is no better place than https://www.thechillijamman.com/shop/

    The Podfather is my favourite closely follwed by the three peaks – full of flavour but with real heat that comes through. They do a new one with Carolina Reaper, I can’t wait to try it!

  7. New fires here in Northern California are threatening several communities about 7 miles west of my place…including the outskirts of Redding (which was damaged in the CARR fire in 2018). The new Zogg fire is now ~ 20,000 acres after igniting just a little over 24 hrs ago, which gives you an idea of the rate of spread these fires are working with. This fire is driving south, and is likely to merge with the August Complex, now the largest fire in California history by over 2x.
    Meanwhile, further south in the northern San Francisco Bay Area, the new Glass fire has exploded, with several of our famous Napa wineries laid to ruin.
    So far, 3.8 MILLION acres have burned this year, or about 14% of the entire area of Iceland.
    Sorry fer being off-topic, but I need to vent off my despair somehow!

    • Pana’ewa flood basalt like most of Mauna Loa has been given an accurate date in the last few years, and it is very close to 536 AD. Its vent is also above the inversion layer so there would have been no pyrocumulus cloud to scrub the high rising SO2 like there was in Leilani in 2018. With what we now know about how massive lava deltas form, Panaewa was probably in the range of 15 km3, almost as big as Eldgja and probably erupted faster, so some pretty serious stuff. I dont know if Hawaii is tropical enough to count for all the effects, but this should not be discounted as a potential candidate.

      • I forgot to add that only a few months ago it was discovered the initial SO2 readings for Kilauea taken in 2018 were two orders of magnitude too low, average fissure 8 emissions were in the range of 200,000-300,000 tons of SO2 per day and the highest was over 1 million, the final total was larger than Pinatubo… Holuhraun was very similar, so probably there needs to be a massive revision of effusive eruption SO2 volume for all such large eruptions historically

        • The Hillo drill hole cuts through the lava delta of Panaewa and it is just about 35 meters thick, therefore a more realistic estimate would be to use that number as the mean thickness of the delta, this gives about 3 km³. Broad lava deltas form over shallow waters and this was the case for Panaewa, even if some parts are much thicker I doubt it gets much above 4 km³. The volume is not very outstanding for Hawaii, it is probably similar to eruptions from the Lower SWRZ, like the much younger Hapaimamu eruption that formed Mokuaweoweo Caldera in the early 1700s, which judging from the caldera size is also about the same size. Other short-lived eruptions from Mauna Loa and Kilauea are probably similar in volume and younger than Panaewa.

          I do not think the SO2 emissions from these events can produce a significant climate impact. After all 2018 had none. The summit of Grimsvotn had plinian eruptions during the Skaftar Fires that may have contributed to the climate impact of Laki.

          • HVO definitely needs to do a study in these sorts of really big eruptions in particular. Fissure 8 is not a colossal mountain, the nearby cones of Pu’u Honuaula, Pu’u Lena and Pu’u Kaliu are all the same size (~50 meters tall) probably all had eruptions of similar scale. 1960 and 1840 was similar eruption rate average too just shorter duration. Mauna Loa as you say can do flows a few times bigger than fissure 8 on occasion.

            The 1840-1950 Mauna Loa episode never got its fissure 8 either, 1950 was big but not a draining event neither was 1984… unfinished business.

            Im waiting for fissure 8 to get its name 🙂

          • Thanks to paleomagnetism I have more or less figured out what happened in the LERZ of Kilauea. Puu Kaliu has the paleomagnetism of Aila’au, it is the eruption responsible for the first collapse of the 1500 AD caldera. It dismantled the shallow sill complex of the Observatory Shield, resulted in a particularly broad depression, may have doubled in size 2018. I am also interested on the Puna Ridge, I think it last erupted in 1650 and 1790 at the time of pit crater formation on the ERZ, the Puna Ridge is really the key to the past history of Kilauea but studying it is very complicated, there is no good way of dating submarine flows. Perhaps paleomagnetism works idk, but it sounds hard to accomplish. Creating a fairly good history of the last 20000-15000 years may be accomplished if the Puna Ridge is studied carefully.

            The fissure 8 of Mauna Loa was 1868, very intense eruption, the subaerial lava was emplaced in just 3 hours, the following 4 days consisted of dumping it into the ocean. But yes you are right that the last cycles of Mauna Loa have not been completed, Kilauea awakens and sort of forces down Mauna Loa into dormancy.

            Also waiting for fissure 8 to get its name…

          • I think HVO have actually done some dating for the puna ridge, mostly in an attempt to find a flow from 1924, but they found no large flows that they could say were under 2000 years old, though most of the surface is holocene in age. This also makes sense with how the rige is always over 500 meters deep, even at cape Kumukahi it just drops off which is quite unlike at most other volcanoes with active submarine rifts like at Ambrym where the rift continues into the sea with no change. 1650 was about when Pu’u Honuaula was created unless you have other information, and there were large flows around 1790 but probably just before that date. 2018 was mostly derived out of magma stored in the summit as well as a sizable influx just before the eruption but those former eruptions could have tapped mostly rift magma.

          • Actually, your information on paleomagnetism of Kilauea should be made into a full post, HVO seems to have very little information on prehistoric eruptions, and only on summit activity which as you say is only part of the picture. I would very much like to see the full list of dates you have for all the LERZ eruptions.

          • The evidence for the Puna Ridge eruptions come from the 1790 event. There was actually no lava flow in the LERZ that year, I have read the account of William Ellis, and there the natives clearly say the fissure north of Leilani formed with king Kalaniʻōpuʻu, maybe about 1780. The southern fissure should be somewhat older. But there is evidence for a caldera collapse at the summit, the formation of ERZ pit craters at the end of that cycle, as well as south flank earthquakes that threw down houses in 1790, all points to rift activity but it must have been in the Puna Ridge.

            Regarding Puu Honualua it is of Kulanaokuaiki time, paleomagnetism shows the affinity with the Hornet Kipuka flows. The radiocarbon age is probably dating a younger flow from the 1650 eruption, fissures opened from Puu Honualua to Kapoho and resurfaced the whole area, Cape Kumukahi formed in this event, it is probably the eruption of the Kahawali legend and it may have propagated into the Puna. It may have been responsible for the earlier generation of pit craters (though a speculative later 17th century eruption could be responsible too), while the oldest craters of Napau and Makaopuhi possibly mark the end of the Upper Kulanaokuaiki cycle.

            Yes Kumukahi drops remarkably fast, I hadn’t thought much about that, but it does make sense to me. The Puna Ridge grew mostly during Pahala Ash times and afterwards activity stagnated. Now the volcano may be slowly returning to the Puna Ridge eruptions like those of 1790 are probably early attempts, thousands of years from now there will probably be erupting shields and magma chambers in the Puna Ridge and the drop at Kumukahi will probably disappear. It may seem to far from now to predict but I think that is just the natural evolution of Kilauea, the south caldera reservoir and the plumbing system keeps growing over time fed by an exceptional supply eventually. it improves the connection to the ERZ until some big eruption pretty much drains the entire system. I In comparison 2018 was a really small draining, it hasn’t impacted at all the connection to the rift, a very shallow event, the consequences will be only temporary.

          • Paleomagnetic data on the LERZ can be downloaded from the supporting information at the following link.

            https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/94JB01852

            The full article can be downloaded from academia.edu:

            https://scholar.google.es/scholar?cluster=13669757703254178569&hl=es&as_sdt=0,5

            But that is not enough, to really do something with the data you need to compare with the rest of the data from the island. If you look me up on facebook, as Héctor Sacristán, I am in the VC group, I could send you a sort of timeline I have made with all available paleomagnetic data as well as some other eruptions and annotations.

          • Well I had just finished tracing out all the prehistoric lava flows from that map into separate google earth polygons, now most of them are probably wrong… 🙂

            It does make some more sense that there are places actually older than 1000 years on the LERZ though, and not a huge number of eruptions but just very big eruptions. New Mauna Loa maps also have dates sometimes millennia out from the 1996 map, makes you wonder about flows Pu’u O’o buried that are inaccessible.

            I am waiting for the deep pahala swarm to erupt, with how big of a volume the swarm occupies inside a mantle plume even only a few% of the magma inside it erupting will fill the caldera of Kilauea to overflowing several times over, and with flood basalt high fountaining eruptions in months not shield building over years or decades, HVO did well to relocate now, HVNP will truly live up to its name too… maybe the best bit is that Kilauea summit rarely does single massive events probably because of gravity, it tends to erupt episodically, so us lava lovers get a lot of fireworks. Either that or it goes down the rift and chaos ensues, or both of those things… Grimsvotn better hurry up and do what Carl says or it might get its thunder stolen, we win(?) either way 🙂

    • This is the Victoria Smith study I was talking about a while back under the post of Okmok. They established a FAR strong case for the eruption date than Dull’s one. Ice-core shards composition in 432 CE, Mahogany tree dating of 425–440 CE, and tephra markers in the the Early Classic Period of Maya.

      • But they leave a very big hole in the argument regarding climate effects. They argue that the eruption somehow only affected the southern hemisphere, because of prevailing winds (low and high in the troposphere AND in the stratosphere). This seems somewhat unlikely. And the ash was found in Greenland while they argue everything went south. Volcanic ash in Greenland is not that common: ash does not travel far and certainly does not travel against the wind. All other VEI-7’s left big climate marks. The 432 eruption did not. The ice cores indicate that the 432 was a southern eruption – not even tropical. From the ratio of SO2 spikes you’d guess Chile. They found evidence for an Ilopango eruption. Whether what they found was from the big one remains open for discussion

        • Yes, but I believe Tianchi eruption in 946 CE and Taupo eruption in 3rd century did not leave significant climatic effects either.

          • I wonder if one of the factors determining that is how “wet” the eruption is. If the eruption is largely magmaphreatic, perhaps much of the sulfate is immediately dissolved in local water, and little makes it to the stratosphere as sulfate aerosols, so there is minimal climate impact. Same magnitude eruption without much water involvement and a lot more sulfate gets into the stratosphere.

  8. Small eruption recorded in Piton de La Fournasies caldera, two small bubbling lava pools where active for some hours this night 29 september 2020.. it shut down just before day. Eruption is not ongoing now.

    • Also is the OVPF implying that there is a risk for eruption at a particularly low altitude with this statement:

      “Since the creation of the OVPF, 5 seismic crises have lasted longer than 24 hours (March 1986, June 1987, March 1998, January 2004 and April 2007) and have led for 3 of them to the opening of eruptive cracks at low altitude.”

      Hard to tell since volcano observatories are always so conservative in their reports.

      • “Despite a slowdown in activity early this morning, the magma continues to migrate to the surface, explains Aline Peltier, director of the Volcanological Observatory of Piton de la Fournaise. This situation is rare and unusual because the seismic crisis has been going on since yesterday. noon and don’t stop “.

        Yes they were implying that.

      • Whatever happens it will not be as large as Mauna Loa or Galapagos when it erupts.
        Piton De La Fournasie does “mini mauna loa” when it erupts.. fast small fissure eruptions.

        I cannot wait until Mauna Loa or Galapagos or Vatnajökull erupts again and we gets large high volume, high output basalt flows again.

        • Piton has an abnormally small magma reservoir so that it builds overpressure rapidly and erupts more frequently than any other volcano in the planet. Some eruptions can be sizable though, like 2007.

        • Yea the Kilaūea summit magma chamber maybe 12 times larger in volume what I heard of.

          Grimsvötns uppermost magma chamber is estimated to be of almost 50 km3 of eruptible basalt. But not everyting of that can erupt at once.

          Both Kilauea and Grimsvötn may hold many many 100 s of cubic kilometers of basaltic magmas in their deeper systems.

    • Hello,

      I did see that the OVPF is recording strong seismic activity, but I read nothing about witnessed erputive activity… Where did you read about these lava pools?

      Best,
      Marc

  9. Seismic crisis ongoing now for over 30 hours, one of only 5 times a swarm lasting over 24 hours has happened at Piton since 1979 when the observatory was started. Longest was 51 hours before 2007, in a few hours the ongoing swarm will exceed 1998, which was probably long because of being dormant for 8 years. Depth of the swarm is also much greater than usual, 2-5 km deep rather than at sea level and above. I recall reading a paper on the recent volcanism on Reunion and there is a 3rd volcanic zone going east west at right angles to the rift zones, this structure extends to the base of Piton des Neiges and has erupted on a very large scale in the Holocene, 0.5-1 km3 fissure eruptions as well as more normal sized eruptions. Last eruption west of enclos forque was in the 1600s at petit crater, but eruptions in this zone have occurred recently inside the enclos forque, piton hudson in 1998 and piton tremblet in 2007, and also chateau fort in 1948. The high activity of the recent eruptions, and that two eruptions in the last 2 years were west of dolemieu crater for the first time in centuries, probably this obscure rift is active.

    Would be interesting if an eruption outside the enclos forque happens as a result of this, it is mentioned as a real possibility in most of the news outlets right now.

    Jesper I think what you said is new pahoehoe is actually a landslide, and not lava. No mention anywhere of any eruption yet. My guess is the eruption will be at low altitude not a summit eruption.

  10. Most recent update for Piton has that the summit fumaroles have nearly stopped emitting SO2 and CO2 because the magma has withdrawn from the summit. Looks like this is going to be pretty big, maybe like 2007 again but somewhere else on the volcano. Eruption like 2007 but outside enclos forque would be a big deal.

    • The last bulletin from the OVPF shows the station GPNG shooting away from Dolomieu:

      https://www.ipgp.fr/fr/ovpf/bulletin-dactivite-mercredi-30-septembre-2020-a-10h30-heure-locale

      It is very similar to the pattern of deformation of the 2007 eruption, the east flank of Piton is bulging outwards (eastward), the magnitude of the deformation seems also similar to that of 2007. Earthquakes are concentrated in the area moving eastward, yesterday I interpreted this as a dyke intrusion but now I think this is something else, maybe slip of the mobile flank, maybe a sheet intrusion. If there is a dyke it is probably propagating in an stealthy way down the SE or NE rift zones impossible to know where it will break out.

      The situation is very interesting! But I am not sure where it is going, it could be just a tectonic process, unlikely but I don’t see confirming signs of a dyke intrusion. If it an intrusion it could reach the surface somewhere far from the summit and produce a big eruption may be comparable to 2007 and with a caldera collapse, this will depend on the elevation of the fissure mostly. But the dyke might as well not reach the surface at all.

      • Seismic swarm is now second only to 2007 in duration, at 45 hours and counting. In only 6 hours 2007 will also be exceeded. Still saying that eruption on the east flank will probably happen but that is sort of against the faulting in that area so im not so convinced at that, my expectation is an eruption like 2007 but well outside the caldera some time in the next few days. All observed eruptions since 1977 outside the enclos forque have been shallow fissure eruptions of moderate all the way down to very tiny in size, not a major high fountaining pyroclastic cone formation like was seen in 2007, I expect those sort of eruptions have a longer runnup, 2007 probably would have had a longer seismic crisis if it erupted at a more distant location.

        • If it comes to an eruption I also expect I will probably happen outside Enclos-Fouque. All observed eruptions outside Enclos have been small but a quick glance around Enclos in Google Earth shows that eruptions can get more violent than 2007. Many form large cones with signs of strong fountaining, like Piton Chisny which has gigantic tephra deposits much bigger than those of Kilauea Iki, fountains must have reached 500 m at least.

          The dated eruptions outside Enclos cluster around 1500-1600 AD, and at least 2 of these were long lived, unlike historical flank eruptions,Piton Chisny was episodic, a small lava lake bursting into fountining events, Piton Gueule Ronde was sustained and fed a pahoehoe inflated flow to the shore at Mare Longue where it formed a lava delta. They remind me of hawaiian satellite shields, 1500-1600 must have been the climax of Piton’s last cycle. By 1700 it was doing the lava lake shield-building typical of shield volcanoes early in their summit-rift cycles.

        • Enclos where the main Piton Cone sits in.. thats a really large caldera! its twice the size of Kilaueas caldera. Its a drainage caldera too.
          Enclos shares some similarities to Axial seamounts huge caldera.
          Just as hector says… it seems that Pitons large resovair was destroyed a while ago and the magma system is rebuilding itself now. Piton is a much larger volcano than it first appears to be. Enclos drainage event must have been a hell of a impressive sight and likley produced a submarine flood basalt.

      • Last eruption that is considered as an extra-caldera eruption (what they term as an eruption outside enclos forque) was in 2005, although that eruption was unusual in that the dike followed the escarpment and ultimately erupted back inside at much lower elevation, eruption is generally considered as similar to 1977. 1998 was the last time a vent actually erupted lava outside in an obvious manner, but that vent was very tiny, and the 1998 eruption as a whole is not considered an extra-caldera eruption. Its a bit pedantic though…

        There are cones similar to piton chisny all over the entire volcano, most are very old but some are Holocene. There are probably also submarine vents too. Piton de la fournaise is the most recent descendent of the Deccan traps, I think it needs some time in the limelight before Hawaii and Iceland wake up again.

        What a surprise it would be if this turns into yet another 1 km3 basaltic caldera formation eruption, which would be the 3rd time in 6 years, extraordinary. We still have Mauna Loa as a 4th candidate for that too, and Nyamuragira and Etna maybe a bit further along. By that point Kilauea could be ready for round 2 and a dead zone event in Iceland is a real possibility, fans of lava unite 🙂

        Just to summarise on that last bit, large scale basaltic effusive eruptions between 2010 and 2020, we have had Nyamuragira in 2011-2012 (0.4 km3 6 months), Tolbachik 2012-2013 (0.6 km3 10 months), Bardarbunga 2014-2015 (1.5 km3 6 months), Kilauea 2018 (1.1 km3 3 months) and Sierra Negra 2018 (0.2+km3 2 months). Also 0.1 km3 of lava from Pu’u O’o every year for 7 of the last 10 years and similar sort of activity at Etna from 2011-2014, and Erta Ale 2017-2020. Explosive basaltic eruptions above VEI 4 at Ambae and VEI 5 at Grimsvotn, and CEI 4 probably also at Ulawun in 2019 and Nishinoshima this year (major June eruption was basaltic as opposed to andesitic for previous eruptions, and 0.3 km3 total).

        Last bit probably not very relevant but what a decade…

    • That is a good sign! No eruption is imminent but it could happen at short notice and the signs are that it is moving towards breaking point.

        • That is a good moment. Just as we, Europe, start recovering from this covid thing. I’d rather have it now. We are not traveling anywhere soon anyhow.

          • I am guessing that it was because seismic activity was up in September and ground deformation has now surpassed 2011 levels. Bardarbunga still has a fair bit of seismic activity and the two are believed to be linked in some way.

          • Also a jokulhlaup may drain the sub-glacial lake (which is high at the moment), depressurising the system.

          • I think the connection between Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga is mostly tectonic, like the interaction between Kilauea and Mauna Loa but more complicated by the plate boundary. If they were directly linked by a magma conduit Holuhraun probably wouldnt have happened and would have been a large subglacial eruption between the two volcanoes or nearby. Holuhraun was deflected away from Grimsvotn. Maybe with Bardarbunga being somewhat deflated still an intrusion from Grimsvotn the other direction might actually enter, but that probably wont cause a big eruption.

          • You are confusing things. There is a clear anti-correlation between the two in their recent activity cycles. No one is claiming that magma from one system can enter another system. That would run against the pressure gradients. Any link will be through the much deeper magma sills at the bottom of the crust.

          • Before the 1996 Grímsvötn eruption, there was eq activity on both the north and south edges of Bardarbunga caldera rim, then at the Gjálp fissure, where the eruption occurred. So there is some link, either tectonic or magmatic – or the mantle plume?

          • Yes, there is a link. Bardarbunga create dikes quite easily, helped by the fact the summit is so high and it is downhill in all directions. Grimsvotn is unreachable as it goes uphill again. The 2014 dike stopped exactly at the saddle, before turning north. Gjalp is a 6-km rift coming from Grimsvotn, also going downhill from there. It ends almost exactly at the lowest point between Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga. So the end of the rift is reachable by Bardarbunga and may have been affected by pressure from there. The higher part of the rift coincided with the 1938 eruption, but it extended beyond that.

          • The summit of Grímsvötn may by uphill but her magma source may not be.

          • That is not a problem. It is like the school lesson on communicating vessels. If two water containers are linked, even if the link is way down, water will flow from the one with the higher level to the one with the lower one. The magma carried the weight of the rock above it (and the ice as well but it weighs less). That pushes the magma to where the weight is less. Thomas calls it the ‘gravity model’.

          • Or magma flows across from Bárðarbunga’s magma reservoir or another nearby source to Grímsvötn down hill / horizontally / up hill to meet Grímsvötn’s magma, enabled by rifting. There may be magma mixing. Whether or not that will cause an eruption will depend on the chemical and thermal differences between the magmas (I don’t know enough about the composition of either volcano’s magmas, other than they are predominantly basalt / picro basalt) plus the impact of any changes in pressure.

          • Grimsvötn – Bardarbunga are both high melt rate.. Thoelitic Basalts. They are similar in mineral chemistry to Hawaiian magma series.

          • Magma at Grimsvotn, as above, is tholeiitic basalt, it is basically the same as what erupted at Holuhraun. I think there is a certain difference to Hawaii though as Icelandic magmas seem to almost always turn to a’a upon cooling, holuhraun has very little smooth pahoehoe on its lava channel in the manner of the fissure 8 flows despite very similar physical properties when molten. I dont know what this exact difference is though. It could simply be that Iceland is a lot colder in climate as most pahoehoe flows seem geographically to be in hot places.

          • Chad… Iceland haves plenty of pahoehoe, forms during slow effusion of very fluid lava, northen Iceland above Vatnajökull, haves the largest holocene paheohoe fields in europe and perhaps on the planet.

            Indeed Holuhraun lacks fissure 8 s fluid channel overflow pahoehoe, despite erupting at similar eruptive rates and styles. Holuhuraun is the hottest Icelandic lava flow ever seen in action it was above 1180 C and
            a sillica content of 49%. Holuhrauns lack of smooth overflows can be explained by Holuhraun having a high ammount of microlites, small mineral crystals. Holuhraun was hot and fluid, but full of small crystal that makes up over 20% of the 2014 magmas. Perhaps the 2014 eruption dragged setting crystals from very large resovairs.

          • Amazing how a magma that hot and primitive coud be so microlite full.
            2014 was still a very very fluid eruption, Baugur crater had same textures as ambryms and masaya dome fountains, 2014 was badass with that long bathtub of roiling gassy basalt. Holuhrauns viscosity is low in papers. At close to 1200 C Bardarbunga was the hottest Iceland lava recorded in action so far. The hottest holocene was Kistufell 1270 c

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apZfRd8uKZU&t=153s

          • Grimsvötn 2011 was acually much more crystal poor than Bardarbunga 2014. The microlites in Holuhuraun are likley from mixing with older magmas that sat in Bardarbungas upper chamber, but Im not a geologist.
            Bardarbunga was still a very hot liquid magma, compare it to Etnas cold mush

          • https://www.flickr.com/photos/82763166@N00/page7

            Here is some awsome photos of the huge lava channel that where produced by Holuhraun. Looking very much like Fissure 8.
            2014 had low viscosity, the diffrence between is hair fine, but haves to do with the microlite content in the magma. So bad that close acess to baugur was not allowed during the eruption

          • It must be post-eruptive weathering that dulls the smooth surface then, if you look at Afar, Galapagos and Hawaii the pahoehoe is all very shiny and grey, but Iceland has only weathered pahoehoe that looks a bit like a’a except in a few shields that are younger. Maybe that is age though more than anything.

            I think writing 5 short comments in rapid succession still counts as a wall of text too Jesper, would be better to talk about this on the bar.

          • Holuhraun viscosity is indeed a bar type disscusion..
            But You should go to flickir or other photo sites, take a close look at Holuhraun in action, and you will see that its sligthly more viscous than Hawaii and Galapagos.
            (Lots of microlites is why Holuhraun haves rough lava near channel vent overflow ) Have a good day… time for me to fly off for a while

    • There’s a bit more information on the Almannavarnir website in its September 25th report: https://www.almannavarnir.is/frettir/haustfundur-visindarads-almannavarna/
      They seem pretty confident in concluding that “It is therefore likely that there will be an eruption from Grímsvötn this autumn.”

      Here’s the Google translate version in English:
      “Measurements of the height of the ice cave in Grímsvötn show that it has risen steadily in recent months and the water level is 7.5 m higher than at the beginning of June. Rising speed has only decreased due to decreasing surface loosening. The water level in Grímsvötn is now similar to what it was shortly before the glacial eruptions in 2004 and 2010 and has not been higher after the eruption caused by the Gjálpar eruption in the autumn of 1996. It is therefore likely that there will be an eruption from Grímsvötn this autumn.

      “Earthquake activity has increased slightly in September. Changes in Grímsvötn are being monitored in particular, as current conditions could have the effect of triggering an eruption following a glacial melt, but it could also start without a glacial melt as a warning. Further measurements of gas emissions and changes in the surface, such as geothermal energy and the formation of geothermal boilers, will be carried out in the coming weeks, but surface signs indicate increased geothermal heat at Grímsvötn.”

        • It’s from the “Autumn Meeting of the Scientific Council for Civil Protection”.

          The preamble to the report that I copied and pasted says this:

          “The Scientific Council for Civil Protection met at a teleconference on 23 September where the activity of earthquakes and land changes in the Tjörnes fault zone and the Reykjanes peninsula were discussed. In addition, the results of measurements in Grímsvötn, Mýrdalsjökull and Krafla were reviewed. The meeting was attended by scientists from the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the University of Iceland Institute of Earth Sciences and ÍSOR, as well as representatives from Isavia-ANS, the National Commissioner of Police’s Civil Protection Department and representatives from most police districts.”
          (Google’s translations from the Icelandic in the link in my earlier post)

  11. Sierra Negra haves a pretty big caldera! as large as the chixclulub asteorid coud just perhaps be fit there, the space mountain woud cover the entire arera. Its as large as Bardarbungas caldera.

    Sierra Negras caldera coud have formed during a major drainout. Most of the recent summit eruptions been on the northen caldera rim, infact almost all historical eruptions been there. 2018 was probaly almost 0,5km3 and formed a long lived cinder – spatter cone near the coast. Sierra Negras caldera did form long ago, but was it a single huge drainout event or a numerous collpase event? Galapagos drainage calderas are huge but most of the lava volume often escapes underground.

    Here is the opening of the 2005 eruption of Sierra Negra. and is one of the largest and most impressive curtains of lava fountains thats ever been captured in action! these lava falls are many many times larger than Ulu 1969. Eruption rates seems quite larger than 1000 cubic meters a second. Real little flood basalt captured in this video. Sierra Negra is a very underestimated volcano

      • Its not a grainy video, just very far away. The point of observation is a few km from the eruption

    • Galapagos calderas form differently to the calderas of the Hawaiian volcanoes. Calderas on the main volcanoes in Iceland and Hawaii seem to be created by single events that are generally associated with very large eruptions that are usually on land and of comparable or even greater volume than the caldera created which suggests these eruptions are triggered by a substantial input of new magma that puts too much stress on the system and it subsequently breaks to cause the eruption, which is exactly what happened to Kilauea and seems to be what also happened at Bardarbunga looking back.
      Galapagos calderas seem to be mostly intrusive, or the eruption creating it is entirely submarine which was the case in 1968 at Fernandina, so there is no obvious activity to be seen. This also seems to be the case with Reunion, because there is no eruption on land big enough to explain the formation of the Enclos Forque caldera.

      I think Sierra Negra probably was at one point a hawaiian type shield though, it is much flatter and wider than the other volcanoes nearby and seems to have much bigger eruptions, 2005 eruption was 0.15 km3 which is impressive for a basaltic eruption at the summit of a volcano, and 2018 eruption was probably at least this big and likely a lot larger. 1979 eruption was apparently over 1.5 km3 and 220 km2 in area covered in only a month from a fissure in that same area but outside the caldera, but I have never been able to find a map of that years flow anywhere even in scientific papers directly comparing it to 2005/2018 that were made in the last 2 years… If that data is true though then it was 10x as big as the eruption in that video 🙂

      • Calderas on Hawaii are not formed in single events though, the current caldera of Kilauea has underwent 6 major collapses at least, and countless smaller ones.that do not leave geologic evidence. And Iceland too, Bardarbunga and Askja are complex calderas, their historic collapses have only added to previously existing depressions.

        Galapagos calderas are different, I think submarine applies yes, except for Sierra Negra, Sierra Negra has massive eruptions on land, low on its east flank. Intrusive I think is unlikely because Galapagos volcanoes are overpressurized, unlike Hawaii or Iceland, dykes grow short and narrow, not enough volume to collapse anything.

        • the Icelandic calderas are sometimes compound because the central volcanoes often dont erupt enough to fill them but what I mean is that the biggest eruptions there are big enough to generate the entire thing in a single event, same as in Hawaii. Galapagos calderas I think are formed in a different way, because in pretty much all cases they are very deep and have small scale radial eruptions that are not actually within the caldera floor itself very often, and it seems as though very few eruptions actually go into filling the caldera.

          This is actually the case of all the active volcanoes too which is strange, given they are all entirely separate and seem to have no obvious effect on each other at all unlike Hawaii. This also seems to b unrelated to how active they are either, they all have deep calderas with circular rifts and very steep slopes for shield volcanoes, except Sierra Negra which has gentle slopes a filled caldera and rifting fissure eruptions like Hawaii, but still with the circular rift within the caldera like the others too. Cerro Azul seems to also have some sort of rift, but only on the side facing Sierra negra, not the side facing the ocean.

          It is a shame the history of the volcanoes there are so unknown, it is quite a possibility that Galapagos overall magma generation is as high as Hawaii and Iceland with the sort of numbers, at least 3 of the volcanoes are probably entirely surfaced in Holocene lava. Yet apparently the volume of Sierra Negra is only 450 km3 in half a million years which is less lava than Kilauea has erupted in the Holocene by a factor of 2, clearly something has gone very wrong in that numbering or there has been an enormous growth spurt there in the last few thousand years.

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          • I estimated once that Galapagos erupts 5 km³/century which would be about half or a third that of Iceland or Hawaii. Though it is not entirely impossible the productivity is a high as those 2 I think it is actually lower.

          • Some of the magma is re-erupted though each caldera collapse is extra magma to the 5 km³/century because they empty magma chambers that have grown from melting the inside of the volcano and the estimate is based on the total volume of the mountain/age. This means that if a shield volcano for example grew at 1 km³/century but 1/4 of it was added in caldera collapse events then the amount of lava erupted would be 1.25 km³/century.

          • This last comment was interesting because for example Hawaii would be expected to grow at 20 km³/century based on long term growth but 1/2 or 1/4 of it would be rift spreading leaving about 10-15 km³ to be erupted but the 18th century had a major caldera collapse from Mauna Loa (Hapaimamu) and 2 from Kilauea so that might have meant a “bonus” of 5-6 km³ for that century. So idk what I was trying to get to, maybe that some centuries are more exciting than others.

          • Well in that case this century will be one for the history books and im not talking about what has already happened, 2018 was only the beginning. 🙂

  12. The Piton de la Fournaise observatory reports that a station of the east flank, GPNG, has moved 70 cm east and 20 cm up since the crisis started. The seismic profile seems to mark the detachment of its east flank, signs indicate that the flank has slipped over the past 3 days of “crisis” and is slowing down.

    The detachment seems to be very steep, the slope is of about 45 degrees judging from the section.

    There is nothing to indicate the involvement of magma so far, it has been 3 days since it started and still no reports of cracks, fumaroles or lava outbreaks. This would be the ideal situation to send a dyke far down the rift zones like it did in 2007 with a similar slip, but the volcano remains quiet. Either way, if Piton doesn’t take advantage now of the rift opening created by the slip, it will probably do so somewhere in the next several months.

    • The upward movement of GPNG is puzzling though, maybe it is an indicator that there is the pressure from a dyke swelling up the flank and driving the slip but it could also be that the toe of the flank is compressed and uplifted by the massive movement right above.

  13. Offtopic but Im curious

    Do anyone here knows the core center temperature of R136a1? The most powerful, and heavy and hottest as well as most louminous star we knows of.

    Our suns core must be like absolute zero in comparsion! because R136a1 haves 300 solar masses

    Eeee should take this in VC Bar

    • It is just underneath the temperature that is required to spontaneously reverse the antimatter-matter reaction. When that does happen it will generate spontaneous electron positron pairs and this will use up a lot of energy, causing a total core collapse and a rebound so powerful it totally destroys the star. These stars have no red giant stage, they become wolf rayet stars, so they get even hotter and more luminous before they suddenly blow up. Fast spinning wolf rayet stars go supernova through their poles, which is a gamma ray burst.

      There is also a case of a particularly powerful supernova that was caused by a white dwarf exceeding the chandarsekar limit inside of its companion 🙂

    • How many 100 s of billions of C is that maybe even trillions of degrees? Lol these crazy temperatures terminates all solid matter in an instant
      The core pressure and density must be sickly too

  14. It looks like Kilauea summit tilt might be dropping a little. Looking around I also saw that POC jumped up when POO took a drop on 9/24, maybe some pressure relieved from the summit?

    • If you look at the GPS the same sort of thing happened in March, associated with a larger than typical addition of magma. It makes sense to assume that the influx is overall constant but that it is not unchanging, sometimes the influx probably reaches rates of 10s or in extreme cases (not now) even hundreds of m3/s, but then drops to near 0 for a few weeks to compensate during which time the system levels out, which appears to look like deflation at the summit. Right now I expect in maybe a week or two it will go back up as it was before, but the system is now full so maybe the next time a lot of new magma rises at once it will erupt.

      The one thing notable is that DI events havent restarted consistantly after that initial drop, it has more or less leveled off entirely. Perhaps this is a sign of high pressure, the cross caldera GPS has increased by 15 cm since March, and CRIM station has risen by a similar amount showing definite summit inflation. Pu’u O’o seems less responsive, I think the signal there is coming from the rift as a whole rather than any active magma under Pu’u O’o. That is to say Pu’u O’o is probably not a vent anymore so any new eruption near it is coincidental rather than a revival of the 1983-2018 eruption. It is though probably likely a new Pu’u O’o type eruption could happen in the near future either uprift or downrift, so possibly very little of the east rift will look green by 2050…

      It still seems odd that HVO continue to push Mauna Loa as more likely to erupt, its signals are far smaller than Kilauea, and in recent months it has been eclipsed in seismic activity too. Their calderas are the same size so I dont think Mauna Loa actually has a bigger magma chamber, it can just drain it from an eruption above sea level where Kilauea cant.
      Maybe HVO have to have one with at least weekly monitoring to justify their funding, and they chose Mauna Loa at that time when there really isnt a difference, but also the media will immediately hear a new eruption at Kilauea and think fissure 8 has begun erupting again. Given the potential for large summit eruptions with the lake this is sensible to avoid a big media problem but still a bit frustrating, Kilauea probably makes Hekla look slow when it has summit eruptions, and now theres even less stuff in the way than before… 20th century Kilauea summit was well behaved and stayed inside pit craters to do big eruptions but now the whole summit is the pit crater 🙂 …

  15. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fDwwhqYTJx4

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XrDRkpYSrEA

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ5NH65GG7w

    Good videos of very fluid lava from Piton De La Fournasie. The spring / winter 2020 eruption probaly involved fresher lava than eruptions before. In these videos its really flowing like crazy and its really smooth. But it very quickly turns to Aa on that steep slope.. But at the vents it almost looks as fluid as Hawaii and Iceland. Previous eruptions from Piton after 2014.. haves not been this fluid.

  16. Today’s Piton report:
    Seismic activity is still recorded under the Piton de la Fournaise (summit zone and eastern flank) even if it continues to decline. Thus for the day of 03/10/2020, , 25 deep volcano-tectonic earthquakes under the eastern flank, 4 earthquakes classified as “indeterminate” (because of low magnitudes) and 24 landslides/superficial collapses in the eastern flank area, were manually pointed. No superficial volcano-tectonic summit earthquakes were recorded.

    During the day of 03/10/2020, no significant deformation occurred in the Great Slopes area. On the other hand, the inflation (swelling) of the summit zone continues to show the pressure of a source below the top, where the superficial feeding system is located (magmatic reservoir from which magma instruments are placed towards the surface). This resumption of inflation is in line with the increase in CO2 concentrations in the soil, which are increasing in the far field (The Cafres Plain sector). This increase is often associated with an upwelling of magma from the mantle.

    The persistence of even lower seismicity shows that magma intrusion to the eastern flank is still active and that an eruption cannot be ruled out. Inflation in the summit zone and increased CO2 concentrations show that a new intrusion cannot be ruled out. The observatory’s teams remain mobilized.

    In other news… “POO took a drop”??? They have to look for a new abbreviation for that sensor. 🙂

  17. Hmm. Just glanced at Grimsvotn’s drumplot chart for 9:45 this morning (Icelandic time) and there’s a quake followed suspiciously by what looks like continuous tremor, very slowly fading.
    Any thoughts?

      • This is the lake level. The rise had slowed down as the temperature was dropping in autumn, but suddenly went back up. Over summer the peak increase was 1 meter per 10 days, and it had halved since then. Now we have 10 cm in half a day. Wait and see. It seems like a new inflow into the lake. Not a sign of eruption, but if this triggers the glacial flood that could trigger the eruption itself. Or not – it depends a lot on how close it really is. Seismicity is still some way below levels at previous eruptions.

        • Maybe melt water from some geothermal cauldron drained into Grímsvötn. Like what happened during the Gjálp eruption, but on a much smaller scale.

          I don’t think the strange waveform in the drumplot is related to the lake level change. I have seen those waveforms happen before and it looks a bit like there is a change in the gain setting of the seismometer. What looks like an earthquake could be a filtered discontinuity and what looks like tremor could be amplified noise. At 13:30 there is another blip and it goes back to normal. Then there are several short glitches lasting less than a minute each. For instance at 16:34.

          • When looking at the lowpass plot, those other glitches looks like DC-offset compensation being turned on and off. I still think the first long one is due to different gain settings though.

      • Soon we will need to change the name from Grimsvotn to Grimsbunga

          • If you mean that guy who got banned no im not, but I can see why you thought that looking back at comments from then… I will try and be more reserved commenting from now on to avoid that same fate.

  18. Rumble at the HFF this morning.
    3 plus begins low ends high for a change

    Tuesday
    06.10.2020 05:47:20 66.203 -18.208 11.5 km 4.0 99.0 4.2 km NE of Gjögurtá
    Tuesday
    06.10.2020 05:37:13 66.203 -18.212 12.1 km 3.8 99.0 4.0 km NE of Gjögurtá
    Tuesday
    06.10.2020 05:35:08 66.205 -18.219 11.4 km 3.7 99.0 4.1 km NNE of Gjögurtá
    Tuesday
    06.10.2020 05:31:32 66.209 -18.239 11.6 km 3.5 99.0 4.2 km NNE of Gjögurtá
    Tuesday
    06.10.2020 04:34:19 66.206 -18.223 12.7 km 3.0 99.0 4.1 km NNE of Gjögurtá

    Source IMO.

  19. Another interesting signature on Grímsvötn, Im guessing its a “pop” of the glacier and water rushing in the lake.

  20. Mauna Loa is getting a little busy with a 3.3 the most recent. There is a tremor signature, but I did not see any associated quakes.

    2020-10-07 09:25:53 3.3 3.4
    2020-10-07 01:18:16 1 5.5
    2020-10-07 00:23:35 2.9 6.9
    2020-10-07 00:22:28 2.4 5.6
    2020-10-07 00:18:23 2.3 6.9
    2020-10-06 23:07:13 2.3 6.5
    2020-10-06 23:03:05 1 5.5
    2020-10-06 22:57:36 2.9 6.4
    2020-10-06 13:56:45 1.9 9.4
    2020-10-06 07:31:51 1.7 1.5
    2020-10-06 04:10:59 1.8 -2.1

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