As the lava flow from Kilauea continues to progress into the town of Pahoa, city officials are being informed by scientists that it’s likely the town will be cut in half if the lava continues its current path.
The flow is expected to reach Pahoa Village Road late Wednesday, cutting off one of the two major roadways where residents can escape the lava flow. The second road, Highway 130, is only half a mile from the Pahoa Village Road.
Officials say they are resisting mandatory evacuation orders despite the lava igniting a tire fire at a dump in the flow path. The toxic smoke from the fire is reportedly blowing away from residential areas.
Matt Patrick of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory says the flow is moving erratically and is causing problems for forecasters trying to predict path and speed.
The lava’s pace had picked up when it reached a gully. The flow could then move like rain in a gutter.
The state of Hawaii has announced they will create a staging area where residents of the community of Pahoa will be able to watch the lava from the Kilauea volcano consume their homes.
Hawaii County Civil Defense Director Darryl Oliveira told the Associated Press it’s a way to help the residents find “a means of closure” in the situation.
The lava was reported to be 70 yards from the first home in its path on Tuesday morning.
A spokeswoman for the Hawaii Volcano Observatory said that the lava’s pace is being controlled by the topography of the area and in some places has slowed significantly as the lava moves up small inclines.
Oliveira says that many of the residents in the path of the volcano have already made arrangements to live somewhere else or have just left their homes in anticipation of the lava. He said he doesn’t believe he will need to issue a mandatory evacuation order.
The last time lava threatened homes was in 2011, when one home was destroyed before the lava changed course.
The lava flow from a Hawaiian volcano is threatening to overtake a town.
The flow from the Kilauea volcano, which has been continuously erupting since 1983, has crossed the border of the community of Pahoa. The flow covered the town’s cemetery over the weekend and is steadily progressing toward homes.
“The flow continues to remain active and has advanced approximately 275 yards since yesterday morning,” government officials reported Monday morning.
The Associated Press says the lava flow has been slowly moving toward the town for the last two years. The governor has asked for a Presidential disaster declaration to make federal money available for evacuation and relocation of the town’s residents.
“The effect of the destruction and/or isolation of the businesses and other institutions in Pahoa will be devastating to the entire Puna District,” the governor wrote in his request, according to West Hawaii Today.
Japanese officials say at least 36 people are feared dead after the unexpected eruption of Mount Ontake.
Rescuers on the peak say they’ve discovered five more bodies under the grey ash that makes the mountain look like the surface of the moon. The search for victims is being suspended because of fears of toxic gases breaking through the mountain.
At least 12 people are confirmed to be dead with 63 injuries. At least 8 are missing and officials say it’s likely the missing people are dead.
The eruption of the mountain’s over 10,000-foot peak struck when hundreds of climbers were on the mountain. The mountain is a site where families would take children to see the leaves change color or to enjoy the breathtaking views.
Now, the paths on the mountain have ash as much as knee-deep.
The last major eruption of the mountain was in 1979 although there was a minor eruption seven years ago.
Japan’s Metrological Agency said they might reconsider their surveillance system for volcanoes.
Volcanoes on opposite ends of the world erupted on Thursday.
The Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland, which has been the subject of close monitoring by seismologists since a series of earthquakes began weeks ago, finally broke through the ice covering with what the Iceland Met Office called a “fissure eruption.”
The volcano had erupted under the ice earlier this week leading to an aviation warning but it was canceled when the volcano’s activity appeared to cease. The latest eruption reportedly has lava spewing to the surface but “has not shown signs of volcanic ash.”
Despite the lack of ash, the aviation warning level has been raised to red and flights are being diverted around the volcano’s area.
Aviation experts have also placed a warning over the Tavurcur volcano in Papua New Guinea following an eruption Thursday.
The Volcanic Ash Advisory Center has been monitoring the ash cloud and providing updates to airlines. The cloud of ash has been drifting southwest since the eruption.
“The volcanic eruption reached the top of the atmosphere at 50,000 feet which is the same height as which planes travel,” said meteorologist Ian Shepherd “It’s too early to say at this point if the ash cloud will reach Australia but it was a significant eruption.”
Icelandic officials are warning airlines worldwide that one of the world’s largest volcanoes is likely in the process of erupting.
The volcano alert level of Bardarbunga has been raised to “orange” which means “heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption” according to Iceland’s volcanic scale. The Met Office, located in the capital city of Reykjavik, says that over 250 tremors have been recorded since midnight local time.
The volcano is 15.5 miles wide and rises about 6200 feet above sea level. The volcano last erupted in 1996, melting the glacier above it and spewing ash and molten lava.
Iceland’s last major eruption, the 2011 Grimsvotn volcanic event, caused flight cancellations across Scotland, England and Germany because of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. The massive Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption in 2010 caused over 100,000 flights in Europe and across the Atlantic to be cancelled out of fear of glass particles from the eruption damaging aircraft engines.
The massive supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park is melting roads throughout the national park.
The National Park Service is banning visitors from entering some parts of the park because the roads and the ground has become too dangerous for human passage.
“It basically turned the asphalt into soup. It turned the gravel road into oatmeal,” Yellowstone spokesman Dan Hottle said.
Park officials are telling visitors not to hike into the area because what appears to be solid ground could actually be dirt on top of boiling hot water. They characterized the risk of stepping into potentially fatal pools of water as “high.”
“There are plenty of other great places to see thermal features in the park,” park spokesman Al Nash told The Weather Channel. “I wouldn’t risk personal injury to see these during this temporary closure.”
Scientists last year determined the supervolcano under Yellowstone was twice the size as previously believed by researchers.
Scientists investigating the rapid increase in movement of Antarctic glaciers have found that underwater volcanoes are heating water and increasing ice melt.
The segment of ice in danger has six major glaciers that are facing major collapse. If the area completely melts, the entire global sea level will rise at least four feet. (A collapse is considered the point when a glacier starts an unstoppable retreat that would drop millions of tons of ice into the sea.)
Dustin Schroeder of the University of Texas at Austin says that volcanoes and “other geothermal hotspots” are driving the melting of the glaciers and recent studies are showing there is no way to stop the eventual collapse of the glaciers. The challenge to scientists is to accurately estimate if it will take hundreds of years or thousands for the glaciers to be completely destroyed.
The problem with predicting the outcome is that computer models cannot accurate anticipate the volcanic activity taking place under the ice sheet. Much of the area is unexplored and unmapped, as a new under-ice volcano was discovered in 2013.
One of the hottest points is around Mount Takahe, a volcano that actually has broken through the ice sheet. There are smaller volcanoes and vents that increase the temperature of the water as much as three times the level of sea water under other parts of the continent.
Schroeder said the scientists believe the extra melt from the volcanoes lubricates the ice sheets from beneath and accelerates their slide toward the open water.
The red alert has been downgraded to an orange alert after the eruption of Alaska’s Pavlof volcano has begun to subside.
The orange alert level has been issued because scientists do not know if the mountain will begin to erupt again.
The volcano is just over 8,200 feet tall and is in the flight path of many major international routes. The most recent eruption shot ash into the air over 30,000 feet but because of wind currents and weather conditions it was not enough to disrupt international travel.
The eruption began May 30th and escalated to peak between June 2nd and 4th. Volcanologists recorded lava flows and huge ash plumes during the eruption period until the morning of June 6th when activity suddenly declined.
Because of the remote location of the volcano, no injuries were reported.
A red alert has been issued for an Alaskan volcano located on the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Pavlof Volcano, which has been active for years in releasing smoke, erupted with high intensity sending a plume of ash and smoke over 24,000 feet into the sky. The eruption was so significantly that the Alaska Volcano Observatory issued their first red alert warning since 2009.
The last alert was for Alaska’s Mount Redoubt when an eruption sent a 2009 plume over 50,000 feet into the skies. Scientists believe that the volcano could be active long after the red alert will end.
“This means it can erupt for weeks or even months,” observatory research geologist Michelle Coombs said of the warning. “I don’t think we will be at red for that long, but we are expecting it to go for a while based on its past.”
Scientists say that commercial air traffic has yet to be impacted by the eruption but say that changing weather patterns could cause a serious disruption to flights.