Soufriere Hills and Kliuchevskoi Updates for 10/5/2009

Two volcanoes that have been rumbling and rocking for a while now made some noise today:

Kliuchevskoi Volcano in Russia.

Soufriere Hills on Montserrat had a relatively impressive explosive event, producing a ~3 km / ~11,000 foot ash plume – its first eruption in 10 months. This was after a sharp increase in seismicity at the West Indies volcanoes since Sunday. This is a bit of a surprise as the eruptive period at Soufriere Hills was seen to be coming to an end – however, this eruption isn’t really anything out of the ordinary according to James White Jr., the acting director of the Disaster Management Coordination Agency.

On the other side of the world, Kliuchevskoi on the Kamchatka Peninsula is showing signs that it could be headed towards a larger eruption. The volcano is experiencing Strombolian-style eruptions every 1-6 minutes that produce ~300 meter / ~1000 foot ash plumes with ballistic bombs. The volcano is a restless system, erupting quite often, so this is well within the range of normal activity at Kliuchevskoi. Seismic stations are recording ~100 earthquakes a day at the volcano. (However, feel free to ignore the photos for both linked articles – neither are Kliuchevskoi (above).