#ash-plume

#ash-plume

Flash flooding has been a major problem in recent days in places such as Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where rain had been falling between 1 and 2in (2.5 and 5cm) an hour overnight, according to the Hawaii emergency management agency.

We're not expecting much in terms of winds, mainly just going to be flood potential. And thinking that the focus is going to be Oahu, Maui County and Big Island, with Kauai kind of being on the fringes of it versus, you know, all the Islands were impacted last time.

The fragile-looking filaments of cooled lava known as Pele's hair can form when pockets of bubble-rich lava pull apart rapidly, experiments suggest.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

The 1993 erotic thriller Sliver should have ended differently: Zeke, played by William Baldwin, was scripted to fly a helicopter towards an active volcano, after Sharon Stone's character, Carly, reveals she's the killer. The pilot, Craig Hosking, had been tasked with flying low over Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, accompanied by the director of photography, Mike Benson, and his assistant Christopher Duddy, to film the bubbling lava and white plumes of smoke escaping from the Puu Oo vent.

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes. The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight.

Researchers have detected rising temperatures, bubbling gases and unusual sulfur formations inside Mexico's El Chichón volcano, also known as Chichonal. The changes were recorded by scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) during monitoring between June and December 2025. The volcano last erupted in 1982, killing at least 2,000 people in one of Mexico's deadliest volcanic disasters. Scientists observed elevated heat, shifting crater-lake chemistry, and gas emissions including hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, which can be hazardous in high concentrations.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

WeatherA powerful early-week storm delivers very heavy snowfall to Mt. Etna, then tapers to lighter, higher-quality snow mid to late week as winds ease. Snow levels fluctuate between about 4,400 and 5,900 feet, so lower elevations may see some rain or mixed periods at times, while upper mountain conditions stay wintry with temperatures holding in the upper teens. The core of the storm arrives Monday night through Tuesday night with intense winds and denser snow.

There is nothing more fundamental to human existence than breathing. Without air, people die in a matter of minutes. As well as the oxygen that is essential for survival, air contains pollutants of increasingly anthropogenic origin. These contaminants are emitted into outdoor air by combustion, which is essential for generating energy, and by the industrial and agricultural processes that underpin every element of modern life. Contaminants also penetrate buildings, in which they mingle with indoor air pollutants, rendering homes and offices not entirely safe.