Nevado del Huila is kicking up
Belba Grubb
Here is the Web page (in Spanish): http://intranet.ingeominas.gov.co/popayan/P%C3%A1gina_Principal
The seismograph image isn't what we're used to (we're spoiled!) but
it's clear enough, especially if you've seen it during Huila's more
quiet phase recently, to see that there has been a major increase in
activity. The image is hours old, but that big stripe might be last
night's signal and possible event; can't say for sure without seeing
the time stamps.
The webcam requires Java but gives a good view of the whole volcano;
unfortunately, it's usually cloudy up there, and soon it will be dark,
too.
Here is the GOES-12 ABBA wildfire satellite of Southwestern Colombia
-- correct date, but unfortunately, it's even older than the
seismograph image--don't know if they update it on the weekends:
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/burn/wfabba/wfabba_scolecua.html
You have to know where Huila is; here's an image (that you can
enlarge) from the not-recently-updated ReliefWeb page:
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/dbc.nsf/doc108?OpenForm&rc=2&emid=VO-2008-000220-COL
The move of residents in endangered Belalcazar to a safer location is
underway, I think, but people still live there. I used to wonder why
they protested the government's plans to move them but have since read
up on the area and realized that it is pretty much smack dab in the
middle of all the troubles (FARC, drug dealers, and so forth). Guess I
wouldn't be in a big hurry to move to a new area and its unknown
dangers and people, either. But they are in real danger there. Hope
there is no repeat of the 1994 lahars.
Barb
Belba Grubb
to read now, too, with that new contrasting effect, and they seem to
have done everything possible to reduce the distortion from the barrel
shape.
The GOES-12 imagery isn't all that helpful, is it; not even the loop,
since it doesn't cover the full 24 hours. It does, however, show why
it's so cloudy up there so often -- can't expect much else, I suppose,
in between the Amazon jungle and the deep blue sea. I've been watching
it frequently over the last several months, and there are more
frequent clear views of Huila in the webcam now that spring has
arrived, but it's probably going to be luck more than anything else if
one of those corresponds with an ash emission or an eruption.
No new updates on the Web site since the 16th, although possibly Huila
has calmed down quite a bit. There is still activity, though I won't
even try to guess of what sort, except for the very obvious VT
earthquake there about 10 turns ago, and what might possibly be either
tremor or something like a series of closely spaced LP earhquakes a
little over 1 turn prior to that; and they still have the volcano at
code orange.
PS: Even as I write, something's happening up there.
Barb
----------
"Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!"
-- Thomas Carlyle
Belba Grubb
though.
Bart
Belba Grubb
> Bart
Would you believe "Barb"? Was a little excited there. Anyway, here's
the VAAC page for Huila;
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/messages.html
nothing up yet on this. Last report was about 8 hours ago. There
should be something posted soon, unless the seismograph is
malfunctioning. That signal is stronger now.
Barb
Belba Grubb
missed the hand. This does show the approximate start of the ongoing
event at Huila, though, as well as what I earlier called a VT quake
and the possible LP series a bit more than 1 turn before the VT quake:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9741459@N07/4025558542/
This increased signal did continue and get stronger and then start
tapering down. Then they changed the readout, apparently. Nothing yet
on the Washington VAAC Web site or the Ingeominas Huila page.
Barb
Belba Grubb
that column looks to have a little ash in it, too. The weather has
changed in the last couple hours -- at dawn, it was a very ashy view,
with no wind recorded at the Popayan airport, per Wunderground.com;
and I just couldn't tell how the summit looked. Now a front has come
through, or something, and really cleaned things up.
We are fortunate -- that is the clearest view I've ever seen up there,
or would be if it weren't for the steam or ash.
Still no word from VAAC or anything in the local news online that I
checked. Ingeominas's page has no new updates, either. The seismograph
has been much calmer for many hours now.
My best guess about the summit's condition this morning was that most
of the rock remained but there was no more snow/ice. That's just a
very marginal guess, though, as it was very obscured with ash/cloud.
Sigh. I wonder how all the villages are.
Barb
Belba Grubb
its thing. The seismograph hasn't changed much, but I guess that means
there is no obstruction in the vent, not that the eruption is over. As
a matter of fact, that cloud is growing.
I just can't find any mention of this anywhere online...I did learn
that there was a big landslide in Huila in the last day or so, due to
heavy rains. Also, there is some ongoing combat in the region between
the Colombian military and FARC; that is near Cauca, though; not sure
how far away from the volcano that is. All in all, not exactly ideal
conditions to help people.
I never before realized just how lucky we are here in the US, or over
in Europe in the volcanic areas, with our rapid response and excellent
communications and transportation networks.
Barb
Belba Grubb
those people nearby will be okay. Here's a cam image I took earlier,
when it was prettily "nevado": http://twitpic.com/m4j8k
Barb
Belba Grubb
of it in any of the places I usually look: VAAC, Ingeominas, Google
News, the Volcanism and Eruptions blogs.
I don't mind admitting a mistake, having made some big ones in the
past about what I've seen in a cam (mistaking active cloud formations
around the top of Vesuvius in a live-action cam a few years ago comes
to mind, as does that brush fire in a canyon at the base of Popo that
Brian, who is unfortunate enough to have a lot of experience watching
such fires, so kindly explained to me). It's good for a laugh.
What is puzzling is that there is no mention whatsoever that anything
happened last night at Huila, and something definitely did, per the
seismograph throughout and via the webcam this morning. Had I known
this would happen, I would have taken a lot more snapshots of the
seismograph and through the Webcam.
Of note, today "El Tiempo" has published a picture of the summit as it
appeared yesterday, as part of an article on local communities'
preparedness for another eruption, and the summit was intact:
http://tinyurl.com/yht3xoe Per the writer, this was taken yesterday,
although not at 5:30 a.m. local time, since sunrise didn't occur there
until around 5:47, and at that time, per the webcam (as mentioned
above), there was a very ashy, dark, and cloudy view of things for a
while. It was probably taken more toward midmorning, judging from the
blue skies (again, as mentioned above and per my webcam shot), and
from another angle, as the webcam could only see the steam.
Oh well. It was fun, anyway, and I sure don't mind being wrong about
an event that could have killed and hurt so many people.
Barb
Belba Grubb
http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/ARCH09/HUIL/2009J201411.html
Hat tip the Volcanism Blog!
at http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/nevado-del-huila-eruption-throws-up-a-plume/
Barb
Weatherlawyer
> Okay, today it really did: there's a VAAC advisory:
>
> http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/VAAC/ARCH09/HUIL/2009J201411.html
>
> Hat tip the Volcanism Blog!
As with most things these days the market is consumer driven rather
than government controlled for the benefit of research and the
humanities.
Of course any supercilliousness is due to the complacency of the bods
ostensibly in charge. But then again they are cost related problems
too.
In an ideal society every effort to waste public money should be in
the interests of fashioning useful research and outside interests in
the planet.
But since we manage to commit genocide and etc., far more easily than
everything else we do, government interest is still bent on furthering
"defence".
Belba Grubb
else, but there is a problem here. I know what I saw on the seismogram
and webcam in the early hours of Monday the 19th (see above), and I'm
familiar with what ash looks like thanks to the recent eruption at
Mount St. Helens, which left plenty of it spread in front of the
Volcano Cam there during an emission (more so than at Redoubt
recently). True, there was no VAAC advisory on Huila after 2237 UTC on
Sunday night the 18th, until 1411 UTC on Tuesday the 20th, which was
for an observation recorded at 1315 UTC on the 20th. There is also no
mention of any activity at Huila on the night of the 19th in the
recent Ingeominas statements on their web site.
However, this article in Popayan's "El Liberal," about which I got a
Google News notice at roughly 2 a.m. Eastern time on the 20th (so it
was basically news about the 19th), describes in words and interviews
and has photos of what people who live near the volcano found around
them at dawn on Monday, October 19th: volcanic ash (fortunately, not a
lot).
http://www.elliberal.com.co/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9996&Itemid=47
Here's the relevant part (in Spanish, for your translation; emphasis
added):
"Varios municipios del Departamento caucano han resultado afectados
por el alcance de las cenizas que el Volcán Nevado del Huila emitió
después del cambio de alerta amarilla a naranja. Corinto, Caloto,
Buenos Aires, Toribío, Piendamó, Belalcázar, Jambaló y Miranda, entre
otros, *encontraron al amanecer del lunes* acueductos, cultivos y
animales cubiertos de ceniza."
It couldn't have been there when they went to bed on Sunday night, the
18th, and it was there when the sun rose on the 19th. No other volcano
in the area is active, so it had to be Huila. And yet VAAC and
Ingeominas are silent about any events on the 19th. And, to repeat
myself, I know what I saw this time.
What a bizarre situation. My guess is that somebody screwed up
somewhere in the scientific pipeline and figured it could be rather
easily covered up since Huila is way off in the back beyond, in a
restive area, etc. And I don't like that guess and its implications; I
would welcome further illumination on the matter. I've already allowed
to myself that maybe the satellites Washington VAAC depends on were in
eclipse -- I never have been able to figure out NOAA's printed GOES
eclipse schedule -- and so they missed it. However, they do have other
resources available to them, including the same seismograph I was
watching. Maybe it's possible perhaps that the ash column wasn't high
enough for them to detect; I don't know how that works. But that
doesn't explain what I saw on the almost-real-time seismograph or on
the Webcam at dawn.
I'm going to let this go. I'm also going to back off on the volcano
tourism for a bit. It's not fun any more.
Barb
----------
"I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows
the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility
and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed
there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the
thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders,
embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead
or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what
they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it
meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human
bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is
rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any
man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and
draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the
abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as
those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the
fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar
manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in
fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if
men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand
each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger—the moment
when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a
meeting meant a duel."
-- G. K. Chesterton, in "What I Saw in America"
Belba Grubb
they got yesterday from an overflight at Nevado del Huila: it's
spectacular, superb. Wow!
http://intranet.ingeominas.gov.co/popayan/Imagen:2009-10-23-07.11.17.jpg
Link to report, image, and video at main page:
http://intranet.ingeominas.gov.co/popayan/P%C3%A1gina_Principal
Per their update yesterday, poorly translated by me with help from
Babelfish:
"--Two principal centers of gas and ash venting were observed, located
in the higher part of Pico Central, the larger of the two located
between Pico Central and the high part of the dome, and the other
located to the northeast of Pico Central, on the gap that opened up in
April 2007.
"--Extrusion of new magmatic material is evident on the surface at the
extreme north of the dome that formed in November 2009 (west side);
the extruded body demonstrates a thermal anomaly observed by FLIR
camera.
"--The volcanic edifice is completely covered with ash from the
constant venting over previous days.
"--From this morning's observations, it is concluded that the volcanic
system continues to be unstable...."
Per Caracol on Friday afternoon, the Paez River has changed color and
there is also a very strong smell of sulfur at Belalcazar. Full story:
http://www.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=899559 (Spanish).
We now resume our regularly scheduled mad. (Not really - nature is too
great and I am too small to waste overmuch time on such a thing.)
Barb
-------------------
**http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/07/06/funny-pictures-but-iz-still-
a-mad/
Belba Grubb
"...the dome that formed in November 2008 (west side)..."
BGrubb