Samples of extremely small crystal clots, each polished to the thickness of a human hair or thinner, have revealed information about the process triggering the major 2006 eruption of Alaska’s Augustine Volcano. Graduate student researcher Valerie Wasser at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute determined that the addition of hot new magma into Augustine’s reservoir […]
Augustine Volcano sits alone, a 4,000-foot pyramid on its own island in Cook Inlet. Like many volcanoes, it has a tendency to become top heavy. When gravity acts on Augustine’s oversteepened dome, rockslides spill into the ocean. A scientist recently found new evidence for an Augustine-generated tsunami from a time when Egyptian pharaohs built their […]
On Oct. 6, 1883, this entry was in the Alaska Commercial Company logbook at an English Bay trading post, located about 50 miles northeast of Augustine volcano: “This morning at 8:15 o’clock, 4 tidal waves flowed with a westerly current, one following the other . . . the sea rising 20 feet above the usual […]