Vladivostok April 11 (Us): One of Russia’s most active volcanoes has erupted, spewing a huge cloud of ash into the sky and choking villages in drifts of gray volcanic dust, triggering an air warning around the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east.
Shivluch volcano erupted shortly after midnight and reached its peak about six hours later, spewing a 108,000 square kilometer cloud of ash, according to the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Lava gushed from the volcano, melting snow, prompting warnings of mudflows along a nearby highway as villages were carpeted in drifts of gray ash up to 8.5cm deep, the deepest in 60 years, Reuters reported.
“The ash has reached a height of 20 kilometers, the ash cloud has moved west, and there has been a very strong fall of ash on nearby villages,” said Danila Cheprov, director of the Kamchatka Branch of the Geophysical Survey.
“The volcano has been preparing for this for at least a year … and the process is continuing, although it has calmed down a bit now,” Cheprov said.
The volcano will likely calm down now, he said, but more major ash clouds cannot be ruled out.
He said that the lava flows should not reach the local villages.
The Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT) issued an aviation red notice, saying that “ongoing activity may affect international and low-flying aircraft.”
Some schools on the Kamchatka Peninsula, some 6,800 kilometers east of Moscow, have been closed and residents have been ordered to stay home, said the head of the Ust-Kamchatsky municipal district, Oleg Bondarenko, in a post on Telegram.
“Because of what I just saw here with my own eyes, it would be impossible for children to go to school, and in general the presence of children here is questionable,” Bondarenko said.
He said that electricity has been restored to a resident and that drinking water is being supplied.
Shiveluch is one of Kamchatka’s largest and most active volcanoes and has experienced an estimated 60 major eruptions in the past 10,000 years, with the most recent in 2007.
It consists of two main parts, the smallest of which – Young Shiveluch – has been very active in recent months, scientists report, with a 2,800-meter (9,186-foot) peak jutting out from the 3,283-meter Old Shiveluch.
Scientists have posted images of the ash cloud flowing rapidly over forests and rivers in the Far East and villages covered in ash. Someone posted a picture of the depth of the ash fall – over 8cm in depth.
ZHB