Glowing avalanche at Shiveluch volcano yesterday (image: @nakamchatku / Instagram)
The volcano continues to slowly extrude viscous lava, which adds to the volume of the lava dome in its crater and frequently generates smaller and sometimes larger incandescent rockfalls and smaller pyroclastic flows.
The latter have been generating frequent ash plumes that rose to up to approx. 4000 m altitude.
The perfectly smooth and symmetrically shaped spine known as „Dolphin-2“ that had appeared in May earlier this year has by now mostly collapsed as the recent close-up image taken by our expedition leader Andrey shows who visited the volcano about 3 weeks ago.
Shiveluch’s disintegrating lava spine in mid July 2021 (image: Andrey Nikiforov)