Tag Archives: Volcanoes

One day in the year 79, Pompeii came under fire. The explosion of nearby Mount Vesuvius sent a mushroom cloud of ash and rock into the atmosphere, pummeling the ancient Roman trading hub and resort in a ceaseless hail of tiny volcanic rocks. Many residents ran for their lives, trying to find safety with their loved ones before searing volcanic …

Andrew Wozniak, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Delaware, struggled to process what his eyes were taking in. Dr. Wozniak was parked on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean beneath nearly 1.6 miles of water in Alvin, a research submersible. As far as he could see lay a mostly barren expanse of jet-black rock. Just a day before, at …

Five years ago Italian researchers published a study on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. that detailed how one victim of the blast, a male presumed to be in his mid 20s, had been found nearby in the seaside settlement of Herculaneum. He was lying facedown and buried by ash on a wooden bed in the College of …

During the first 17 hours, Dr. Scarpati said, Pompeii was blanketed with pumice lapilli from the column, which fluctuated like a giant fountain through 12 distinct pulses. At 2 p.m., the volcano began to spew pumice mixed with gas. Over the next four hours, roofs began to cave in under the weight of the pumice lapilli, causing some supporting walls …

When the fuming and rumbling at Mount Spurr, a giant volcano northwest of Anchorage, started picking up in October, Alaska’s volcano monitoring agency raised its alert level to ensure that nearby communities and passing airplanes would have ample warning of any eruption. The Trump administration’s cost-cutting campaign has put this work in jeopardy. The credit cards that employees at the …