Soufrière St. Vincent volcano: massive explosion at night, dangerous hot avalanches reported
Satellite image of this morning’s eruption plume reaching the stratosphere (image: Hauraki Gulf Weather @GulfHauraki / twitter)
Another huge explosion occurred from the volcano in the early morning hours at 4:15 am according to Civil Protection and the University of St. Vincent.
Pyroclastic flows were also reported – these are very dangerous, glowing turbulent avalanches of rock fragments and gas likely caused by collapsing parts of the eruption column that can travel many kilometers and destroy everything in their path. There is no data yet on how far and where exactly the pyroclastic flows traveled. We expect more information to come out in the near future, though.
The dome is confirmed completely destroyed. An important question to find out is whether the magma that has now erupted explosively is different from the one that had been building the dome during the past months, and how much of it is still left able to erupt in more explosions.
A speculation is that the previous magma that had been building the new (now gone) dome until recently was actually older, more or less degassed magma left in the conduit from the previous eruption in 1979, gradually pushed out by a new batch of gas-rich magma rising from depth, and erupting now.
The other possibility is that the dome had grown sufficiently to seal the conduit temporarily, causing magma underneath to form trapped gas bubbles, with increasing pressure, until it exploded, throwing the dome out like a champagne cork.
The sudden release of pressure would then open the upper conduit and allow gas-rich, foamy and viscous magma to rise quickly and erupt explosively.
A combination of both processes is a likely possibility as well.
Live updates from St. Vincent:
Soufrière St. Vincent volcano (St. Vincent Island, West Indies): heavy ash fall covered entire island
The landscape of the island is shrouded in the ash blanket from the explosions (image: @VincieRichie/twitter)
A heavy ash fall has blanketed the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and affecting the entire island by extremely poor visibility.
Strong ash and lapilli fall is occurring as far from the volcano as Argyle International Airport some 20 km away as National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) reported.
A fresh scoria was also present in the ash collected at Rabacca river at about 7,4 km from the volcano.
More than 16,000 residents in „red zones“ were urged to evacuate.
The landscape of the island is shrouded in the ash blanket from the explosions (image: @tivonnehowe/twitter)