Indonesia's Mt Merapi erupts, spewing ash 6 km high:
Indonesia's Mount Merapi, one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupted twice on Sunday, sending clouds of grey ash 6,000 metres into the sky, the country's geological agency said.
The two eruptions lasted around seven minutes, according to the agency, and prompted local authorities to order residents to stay outside a three-kilometre no-go zone around the rumbling crater near Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta.
The volcano had a similarly-large eruption on February 13 of this year. Eruptions there are not uncommon but it is dangerous to drop one's guard:
Mount Merapi's last major eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced the evacuation of some 280,000 residents.
It was Merapi's most powerful eruption since 1930, which killed around 1,300 people, while another explosion in 1994 took about 60 lives.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @06:53AM
If the ash plume only reached 6 km high, it almost certainly did not reach beyond the troposphere. It's not clear if the 6 km is the extent of the plume above the almost 3 km height of the volcano. Even so, 9 km is generally below the tropopause, especially in tropical regions. For comparison, Mt. St. Helens had an ash plume that was 22-23 km high, which extends well into the stratosphere. Temperatures rise with height in the stratosphere, which has the effect of inhibiting ascent in pyrocumulus clouds. This is good news because smaller ash plumes that don't reach high into the atmosphere should spread ash over a much smaller area and be less of a hazard to aircraft flying in the region. It's certainly dangerous for the region right around the volcano, but thankfully this isn't a particularly large ash plumes
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @02:21PM (1 child)
When I was in Jogja, I travelled out to the countryside around Mt Merapi. It had erupted a few months back. Whole fields were covered in ash like 50 cm deep, and people were coming in pickup trucks and loading up bags of the ash. I don't remember anyone weighing bags and taking cash, I guess farmers were happy to get their fields cleared so they could plant again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @02:14AM
Let's see if I can present a picture:
Ash from Mount Merapi [imgur.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @10:46PM
He wants them to be good Christians, or at least Buddhists. None of this Muslim stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:41AM
Put some tarps over it to preserve the lava.