Idle question of the day...

[seawasp]

... how many of you have actually witnessed (as in, with your own eyes, not on TV screens, etc.) a volcanic eruption? I have, I'm just wondering how large a percentage of the population has.

(Mine was the 1970 eruption of Hekla on Iceland; we overflew the lava field and then circled the erupting cone for some time in a private aircraft)

Comments

[ckd]

Depends on your definition; I could see the ash plume from Mt. St. Helens on the southern horizon when it erupted in 1980. (Hmm...if I could see it from my house, I guess that would make me a vulcanologist by some standards.)

[seawasp]

That'd qualify by many definitions. I suppose I could be very restrictive and say you had to have been close enough to see the actual vent, which would cut you out.

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

Same here. In fact, we flew over (not directly over, but in a flight path such that we could look out our window and see the mountain) on a flight from Vancouver to LA. This was a few weeks after the big blast, but there was definitely some kind of ash cloud coming out. Wasn't as close as it sounds like you were.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Nope, no eyes-on vulcanism for me. The closest I get is seeing the top of the flame-illuminated plume from the Mississauga train derailment in '79 on the horizon, while the parents were away and I was home alone with my kid brother. The big evacuation came the next day.

-- Steve thinks that's as close as he wants to get in any case. Nuee ardents, sulfur toxicity, CO2 asphyxiation, etc. are best contemplated in the abstract and remote.

[seawasp]

I love volcanoes; I'd love to see an active one again. I understood the Kraffts very well.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I've seen the Eye-Of-Sauron-like red glow of Mount Nyiragongo's live volcano above Goma, burnt my boots on the hot rocks of the caldera of Gunung Batur, and visited Geyser in Iceland, but I've never actually seen a eruption of lava.

[seawasp]

I'd say you qualify. You've been in direct line-of-sight to Nyriagongo.

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

A friend is supposed to be flying from Canada to (eventually) Goma tomorrow but can't get to the volcano because of the other volcano.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

No kiddin'. What for? Goma is not exactly high on anyone's list of tourist destinations. (Although Gisenyi, a short walk across the Rwandan border, deserves to be.)

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

He has friends in the area, and it's a starting point for some more tourist-y destinations. Trip is actually back on now.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Nope. There are no (active or dormant) volcanoes in Texas*, I've never been to Hawaii, and Mt. St. Helens predates me by nearly three years. :D

*Except for the picture my parents took of a cloud formation when they were driving back from College Station last year. You'd swear there was a perfect cinder cone in Fort Worth.

[seawasp]

No, the last volcanic activity in Texas was around 30 million years ago.

Move to New Mexico, however, it gets MUCH more recent, and of course in California there are active and dormant volcanoes.

Gads, you're such a child! I was a senior in high school on May 18th, 1980.

[kengr]

Ah, youth. I was 25 when the mountain went boom.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

30 yrs old for me :-)

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Ha! Depends on your science. :p How much more recent is it in New Mexico, and where exactly?

Good grief, my parents had just graduated college. You really ARE older than dirt.

[seawasp]

In geologic terms, just yesterday -- there was an eruption of several CUBIC KILOMETERS of lava only about 3,000 years ago. New Mexico actually has a huge number of volcanoes of startlingly diverse types (as described here), and I'm actually rather surprised there hasn't been any activity in the last few thousand years, given the existence of a large magma body present below the surface and the fairly continuous history of volcanism.

I am not old at all! My FATHER was old, and as I'm not as old as him, I can't be old.

[nuranar.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I wonder what effect that has/had on the New Madrid quake/fault area. Or on the slight earthquake we had a couple months ago.

Oh, no, Ryk, you're not old. For certain values of "old."

[seawasp]

New Madrid is a separate phenomenon; currently I believe it's thought to be a mostly "fossil" fault that's just slowly releasing old pent-up energy, rather than being active.

I'm definitely young. The mirror here is just lying.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

You must be around my husband's age. He watched the plume of Mt. Saint Helens with his classmates.

I was twelve and a half, very eager to go to the two-week Suzuki workshop in Forest Grove, Oregon, and bitterly disappointed that the amount of ash made the trip unworkable. People were filtering their drinking water and wearing masks in Forest Grove at the time.

Child?

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

And I had been out of academe (I finished with grad school in '76) earning an honest living for just shy of four years in 1980 (working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory developing software for use in the Deep Space Network).

[kengr]

Mt. St. Helens. *Far* too many times (comes of living in Portland for almost 40 years).

The ash plumes were impressive. So was the first time I got a look and saw that the top of the mountain was missing.

However, I was working in a clean room at the time. Ever so much fun on the days that the wind shifted and Portland got some of the ash.

Also fun, the very first time, when we saw some ash filtering into the room. Had to shut down and (I assume) hell was raised with contractors about the clean room (only a class 1000) being leaky in the wrong direction.

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

I've walked on a bunch of dormant / quiescent volcanoes in Japan including the burial place of Gojira - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Mihara

I've also visited the Taal lake in the Philipines (home of the island inside a lake inside an island ... ) which is also allegedly active but wasn't doing anything when I saw it

[seawasp]

Well, Goji-sama is no longer there -- he got out in Biollante.

[isleburroughs.livejournal.com]

Not in real life. Only on t.v..

[selidor]

I saw the eruption of Mt. Ruapehu from my school; we all went outside to see it. Later drove up the more local volcano (Taranaki; quiescent, last erupted 1755) to get a better look at the plume, which was impressively mushroom-cloud. Things like car windscreens were covered in ash for days and days.

We grew up learning the eruption-disaster management plans for when Taranaki will erupt.

(Also have been to Volcano National Park in Hawaii, though I managed to be there on a day when nothing was erupting).

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I saw lava flow from Hawaiian volcano (I don't remember which one), and I saw an awful lot of ash driving up to Oregon in May of 1980. I've never witnessed an actual eruption as it happened.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

I never have. As has been said, there aren't any in Texas and none of the ones on the west coast or in Japan bothered to erupt while I was nearby.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Spent many a happy hour in Volcano National Park while stationed in Hawaii. Actually had my boots catch fire from walking over an active lava tunnel. Stood at the edge of Kīlauea's caldera and watched raw magma bubble up to the surface. I love volcanoes.

[seawasp]

I love volcanoes too. For most of my life up through high school I wanted to be a volcanologist. I was however eventually convinced that being an effort-induced asthmatic who didn't generally do well outdoors was not going to be a good mix with mountains producing irritating sulphuric fumes and silica dust, especially after the St. Helens plume passed over our area and I found it hard to breathe for a day or so.

Still, I would love to visit a few more active ones.

No volcanoes...

[niall-shapero.livejournal.com]

Several earthquakes (hey, I lived in California all my life), but no volcanoes (directly, that is). And thank you, I'll stick with being somewhere ELSE rather in the "blast zone"...

[laurahcory1.livejournal.com]

I went to Hawaii in 198somethingmumble with my parents, and the volcano on the Big Island was erupting. We didn't get too close to it but were close enough to see a small tree burst into flames as the lava flow reached it.