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:

Guys Too Nonchalant About Volcano Blowing Up Next To Them

A couple of guys were setting up a GoPro camera on the edge of a volcano on Vanuatu, a Pacific Island, when the volcano decided to explosively erupt.

I think the guy setting up the camera in the video was a bit too relaxed about the flying chunks of lava flying around him.

What do you think? Watch the video and decide:

Not The Safest Way To Roast A Marshmallow: Using A Volcano

From Caters News. A guy roasts marshmallows and drinks
a beer on the edge of a volcano. Not too smart, in my opinion.  

It's kind of fun for some people to roast marshmallows over a campfire.

Some people MUST do things differently,  however, so we have a guy on video here who trekked to Vanuatu, way out in the South Pacific, climbed up to the edge of a boiling lava lake on a volcano and roasted marshmallows.

He didn't seem to be wearing protective gear, just shorts and a t-shirt.

And I have to wonder how stable the edge of the cliff he was on. If it broke, he'd go down into the volcano, and let's just say more would be roasted than a marshmallow.

I definitely the guy's smarts and sanity, and I'm not advocating anyone repeat what he's doing.

For what it's worth, though, have a watch. If you're in a particularly chilly part of the world, at least the images of boiling lava might warm you up a bit:

Spectacular Video Of Mexican Volcano Erupting

Watch this Mexican volcano explode dramatically in
the video at the bottom of this post.  

A volcano in Mexico erupted Wednesday and a webcam caught the incredible explosion.

Let's just say we should all be glad nobody was near the Colima volcano when it exploded at about 9:13 a.m. local time Wednesday morning, says Mashable. 

The ash cloud went 13,000 feet into the sky. Luckily winds were blowing the ash away from populated areas, including Puerto Vallarta in southwestern Mexico.

There have been no reports of injuries or serious damage with this. Authorities have been keeping people away from the volcano.

As if anybody in their right minds would want to go near it.

The volcano has been erupting repeatedly in recent weeks, but this was the biggest explosion on Colima during its current round of eruptions.

Experts say Colima will probably continue erupting in the coming days and weeks.

This video of Wednesday's eruption is a good reason to stay away from it, but be totally wowed by it.

Watch:

Don't Swim In This Lake In Iceland: Really Awesome Boiling Lava

Iceland's Bardabunga volcano has been a source
of amazing photos and videos since it
started erupting in August.  

Somebody last week took a helicopter over the Bardabunga volcano in Iceland, which has been erupting since August 31.

The volcano, for all its danger, has been an incredible source of amazing photographs and videos, and another great one has just come out from that helicopter trip.

The video shows various aspects of what's going on with the volcano, but I especially love the huge, boiling, roiling lava lake.

Yeah, it's chilly in Iceland, but I don't think that's the kind of lake anyone would want to smooth their cold muscles in.

The volcano has affected a 28 square mile area of Iceland. It could still belch ash to disrupt international flights, and it could melt glaciers in the region to produce dangerous floods.

For now, though, it's just amazing. Watch the video for yet another example among many of the power of nature:

Watch What Happens When You Fly A Drone Into A Volcano

An image from a Drone and GoPro
trip into the Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland.  

The Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland is still erupting spectacularly, so a couple of guys decided to fly a drone as close as they could to the spouting lava to get a good look.

(As an aside, I think "Bardarbunga" is an excellent name for a volcano, or anything for that matter.)

Anyway, you'll see the video they took below. The two guys were Eric Cheng, of DJI Phantom, which makes the drone they used. Photographer Ragnar Sigurdsson attached a GoPro camera to the drone.

The whole account, in Wired, of what happened is pretty cool.  Cheng managed to get the drone faithfully back from the volcano, despite radio transmission problems caused by the volcano.

It turns out the heat from the lava melted and destroyed the GoPro camera, but the memory card for the camera was intact, so they got the video.

The two men got closer to the volcano than local officials wanted them to, because it was so dangerous The day after they were there, a caldera wall in the volcano collapsed, suddenly flooding the spot they were standing with a flash flood of hot lava.

Yikes!

Here's the wild video, h/t Gizmodo.

Dramatic Video: Hikers Caught On Volcano During Deadly Eruption

Ash from an abruptly erupting Japanese volcano
closes in on hikers Saturday.  

UPDATE: Sadly, word has spread since I wrote this post Saturday morning that about 30 hikers died when they were overtaken by ash on the slopes of this volcano.

Very sad, indeed.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

The Japanese volcano Mount Ontake erupted today, and some people were too close when it belched a massive cloud of ash.

At least eight people have been injured, according to media reports, some of them hikers on the mountain when it blew.

Here's a video of hikers on the volcano trying to escape as the enormous ash cloud mushrooms toward them:

Wild Volcano Video. Island Goes BOOM!

This erupting volcano certainly knows how to provide some drama  

A volcano has been erupting in Papua, New Guinea, and as you can imagine, it has drama.

Phil McNamara, an Australian tourist, was on a boat with a bunch of people when the volcano blew.  He shot the video.

When you watch the video, below, you will see why it has gone viral.

Check out what the initial explosion does to the clouds overhead, then wait for the BOOM.

Really cool!

Amazing Video As Drone Flies Into An Active Volcano Crater

I'm really getting sold on drones. Cameras attached to them can capture the most amazing things.

Magma and ash belch from the Yasur volcano.

The latest I found is a YouTube video uploaded in late January by Shaun O'Callahan.

It shows the view a camera on a drone had as it buzzed around inside the Yasur Volcano on Tanna Island in Vanuatu.

Yasur is one of the most active volcanos in the world, according to Volcano Discovery.

It's prone to frequent small to medium eruptions, not cataclysmic ones, so people do get fairly close to it.

Vanuatu is a collection of island way out in the South Pacific.

I found the music O'Callahan chose to accompany the video annoying, so turn the sound down (The video doesn't have the sound of the volcano.)

Still, this is one helluva fascinating video. It also made me extremely glad I wasn't there.

Here's the video:

)

Best Volcano Eruption Photograph Ever?

This is a four year old photograph but it's gotten new life on the Internet lately.

It's an amazing shot of a volcano erupting on an island off of eastern Russia, as seen from the International Space Station.

Amazing shot fro the International Space Station
of a volcano erupting between Russian and Japan
four years ago.

Earth Observatory is always a tremendous source of great photography, usually from space. Do read the link above for a great full explanation of what's going on in the picture.

In this shot, the Space Station happened to be going over the volcano when it erupted, and they captured the big plume of ash going way up into the sky, capped with a white cloud that made the whole thing look a bit like a nuclear bomb.

You can see along the slopes of the volcano something called a pyroclastic flow, which is a fast moving, extremely hot rush of hot gases that kills and destroys everything in its way. Almost everybody that has been killed by a volcanic eruption in the earth's history has been killed by a pyroclastic flow.

Luckily, not many people live near this volcano on the island, northwest of Japan, so nobody got hurt in this eruption.

So, we get to enjoy the awesomeness of nature and geology in this photograph, and not feel guilty about enjoying it, since there were no casualties and not much property damage to speak of