Potential Disaster in the Making 10

[phamENG]

Cumbre Vieja, a volcano on La Palma in the Canaries, just erupted a couple of hours ago. National Geographic did an episode on it as part of a 'Disaster Earth' series a few years ago. Essentially, there's evidence of a massive landslide on the island a few hundred millennia ago, the likes of which would have formed a tsunami large enough to hit the east coast of the US. A recent earthquake seems to have restarted the process and formed a large fissure along the island.

Here's to hoping it doesn't move any more....

 

[1503-44]

The cone is 250m high (820 ft).
Opened two streams from the base on the NW side.
27,000,000 m3 of lava emitted, averaging 60 m3/s (2100 cfs).

 

[RedSnake]

Yes you can se on the direct feed that the lava flow is really fast.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[itsmoked]

44; I can't believe that first video ended before the shockwave arrived. LAME!
This vid is the full-monty

Shock wave at about 4 sec and arrival about 16 seconds later.

How. How?! Does a shockwave like that get generated and the yet nothing physical appears to happen? That fountain doesn't even waver? No rocks come raining down. I've been scratching my head on this since it happened.


The lava speed is exactly what I'd guess would happen. As the flow covers a larger physical area the leading edges are the coolest and their viscosity is the greatest. This causes everything behind to back-up to inflate rather than flowing forward. Interesting situation.



Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[1503-44]

Now that's a blast wave arrival. It might be from an explosion last night though. It looks much darker and there has been a lot of them going on since yesterday afternoon.

Only a very small part of the blast energy is travelling at ground level. Most of that is getting directed upwards.by the creator walls. I can't otherwise explain it. Airspace is closed to aviation. Don't want to shoot anybody down.

Surface sheet flow can do that. It's more complex if the lava forms tubes as it cools and hardens above while hot lava flows underneath. Rock pipeline, lava tubes, are an efficient means to move large quantities of it at high velocities. There are tunnels here that go for 10 km. There is one you can visit. 500m is open to the public. It gets to a diameter of 50ft at some points. Most is around 25ft. They may need steeper slopes to form though. That one is probably a 30° slope. There are many, visible exiting at the ocean cliffs. A lot of the reviews here have formed when their tops collapsed, but you can see the semicircular bottoms still remain. Natural pipelines. Who would have thought? Obviously a very interesting subject, no?

Some ash has shown up this evening. Not too much yet.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

It's not the shoot things down.

The engines melt the silica in the ash and it forms glass on the turbine blades and kills the engine.

You can't see the ash to boot.

 

[1503-44]

There is a 160km long lava tube in Australia!

Don't test my shoot-down theory.

 

[RedSnake]

I think both phenomena is best to stay away from.
The glas blasting and clogging of aircraft motors which could affect big areas and many altitudes.
This blast waves must be quit lokal around the volcano, I guess they have the same effect as columbus nimbus clouds the swift rice of air pressured upwards make the air that is already there get pushed down on the sides to take its place, so if you fly over it you can get "sucked" down when you passed the high pressure point.
Not sure though how far up this can go though.



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

30-40 cm rocks are landing 1-2 km away with 10-20 cm impacting at 4-5 km depending on the winds.

 

[RedSnake]

I hope it is a well known fact to keep away from volcanos when they are active, there is a lot of airspace, so no need to use it if there isn't any high emergencies.



“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

Finally a location for the new fountain.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Ash is up to 17000 ft now

Sort of but like the big Icelandic volcano it can shut down huge amounts of airspace.

Thankfully it's no where near high use airspace or has a Jetstream near it to spread it.

 

[RedSnake]

The map is a bit strange it is like it is two different maps with different proportions one for the landscape and one for the roads.

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.“
Albert Einstein

 

[1503-44]

The cone just broke. Low viscosity, high temp lava is flooding previous flows. Flows thicknesses reaching 12m heights.

 

[FacEngrPE]

Global News live Stream -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBnLpm-Vkk

 

[1503-44]

This morning at 06:50

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

If your interested this is the latest ashtam.

Looks like nothing much has changed aprt from the height is dropping

 

[1503-44]

The runway is closed and covered in ash. Yesterday they had 10 guys out there with ... leaf blowers. People are lining up at the ferry docks.
Yesterday 07:00 - same map actually, with the ash field added.

 

[1503-44]

Lava temperature went from 1050 to 1250°C.
It may also be flowing more to the southernmost lobe.
Reaching 15m height.

 

[dik]

1503... I don't know about the others, but I really like your daily updates, and pass them on to other engineers in this area.

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik

 

[1503-44]

Thanks dik. Nice to know somebody cares.

I'm trying to find out the details of engineering interest, but there isn't much actual data or quantification that's out there. Copernicus is one of the few. the rest are comments that a reporter or interviewee might have noticed and mentioned on air.

Here's another map hot of the Copernicus press. As of this morning 0708 UTC.

Just heard that the Todoque church tower went down. The frontal lobe is on a slow move again at 30 to 40m/h. Movement on the southern flank has begun again and took out some more houses. 514 Damaged structures and 18km roads.

Ash on many houses is beginning to accumulate to the point where it could be threatening some structures. Residents have been advised to keep a watch on it and phone for assistance in removing it as necessary. Residents on the north side have been advised that they can return to their homes, as the lava flows are predominently to the southern lobe. The probability map showed that they were rather low risk, but I guess better safe than sorry is the rule of the day.

The ash has buried all traffic road stripes and is supposedly pretty slick to drive on, so a number of "driving experts" have been on the news today.

Around 20MM cu meters of lava has been emitted. That's 50% of the total of the San Juan Eruption of '71. It is estimated to be 10% of what's to come on this one. Lava is being supplied to this one from deeper levels, 20km or so. They initially only saw 11MM m3 moving up, but it used that up in a few days.

Airport is in service, but all operators have cancelled every flight. Winds continue to be to the North and a weak SO2 cloud is making its way over western EU.

We are getting no more ash here, but I thought I could smell a slight burnt oder this morning.

Google Earth kmz file is attached.