A CLIFF NORTH OF LITUYA BAY — Dan Mann hands me a clump of orange dirt the size of an almond. He instructs me to put it in my mouth. “What’s it taste like? Does it crunch? Ash crunches because there’s glass fragments in it.” “It crunches.” “It’s from Mount Edgecumbe,” he says, referring to […]
Massive eruption of Tonga volcano provides an explosion of data on atmospheric waves The Hunga volcano ushered in 2022 with a bang, devastating the island nation of Tonga and sending aid agencies, and Earth scientists, into a flurry of activity. It had been nearly 140 years since an eruption of this scale shook the Earth. […]
The massive Jan. 15, 2022, eruption of the Hunga submarine volcano in the South Pacific Ocean created a variety of atmospheric wave types, including booms heard 6,200 miles away in Alaska. It also created an atmospheric pulse that caused an unusual tsunami-like disturbance that arrived at Pacific shores sooner than the actual tsunami. Those are […]
On a fine June day about 100 years ago, in a green mountain valley where the Aleutians stick to the rest of Alaska, the world fell apart. Earthquakes swayed the alders and spruce. A mountain shook, groaned, and collapsed in on itself, its former summit swallowing rock and dust until it became a giant, steaming […]