Two Weird Deadly Disasters Prove Nature Is Strange.

A phenomenon called liquefaction turned solid land to liquid, causig
this mess in Indonesia recently. 

Florida is reeling today from the Hurricane Michael disaster, and my sister blog Matt's Weather Rapport has videos of the extreme and scary things 100 to 150 mph winds can do.

To further prove that disasters can be hugely, weirdly, strangely scary, I have two weird videos of how strangely aspects of two recent disasters played out. They are fascinating to watch because it shows how strange nature can be when it goes off the rails.

A couple weeks ago, a terrible earthquake and tsunami struck parts of Indonesia, killing perhaps 1,400 or more people.

The following video, edited to take out the fact that the terrified person taking the video kept turning the camera, shows a strange, large landslide caused the the earthquake.

It's not a steep slope at all, like you see in most landslides. It's a gentle grade, but the entire landscape is moving. My understanding is this is an extreme example of liquefaction.  It usually occurs durig earthquakes in wet soil, or soil that is sandy, or was used as fill to claim a wetland. According to USGS:

"Earthquake waves cause water pressures to increase in the sediment and the sand grains to lose contact wit each other, leading the sediment to lose strength and act like a liquid."

Sounds very scary, and the video below verifies that horror:



The next video shows the aftermath at one house of Hawaii's volcanic eruption this year. Kilauea  has been erupting much of this year. Lava has destroyed hundreds of homes.

Even homes that were not overrun by lava were extensively damaged or destroyed. Huge quantites of sulfur dioxide belched from fissures. This stuff is highly corrosive. It turned the lush Hawaii vegetation in spots into something that looked more barren than Vermont in the depths of post-foliage November.

Worse, it corroded anything that was made of metal. Like leaving the stuff out in the rain for decades. Except this sulfur dioxide destruction took weeks, not years.

At one house, which was under construction when the volcano erupted, everything that was metal, from electrical fixtures to appliances, corroded away. A new metal bucket left outside was reduced to crunchy bits of rust.

The following video of that under-construction property, really is jaw dropping: