Tag Archives: Aleutian Islands

5.6 quake strikes off of Alaska’s coast

Alaska-Earthquake

Important Takeaways:

  • An earthquake measuring a 5.6 magnitude rocked several islands near Alaska on Monday night.
  • The tremors were felt across the Fox Islands in the volcanic Aleutian Islands chain at 9:13 p.m. local time. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), a government agency, shared the details on its website giving the time of the earthquake in Coordinated Universal Time as 6:13 a.m. UTC.
  • In terms of landslide estimates, the agency said “little or no area [is] affected” and “little or no population exposed.” The agency stated that it had issued a “green alert for shaking-relating fatalities and economic losses,” adding: “There is a low likelihood of casualties and damage.”
  • Some of the cities exposed to the quake were Akutan, Dutch Harbor, and Unalaska, the USGG said on its website

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Rumbling Alaska volcano sends ash plume 5 miles into the air

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes, a towering ice-covered cone in the Aleutian Islands, shot a cloud of ash more than 5 miles high on Friday, triggering a warning to aviators and putting on a show that was captured in satellite imagery.

The ash burst from Shishaldin Volcano, about 670 miles southwest of Anchorage, was part of an on-and-off, mostly low-level series of eruptions that began in July with a stream of lava from the crater at the peak of the 9,373-foot-tall mountain.

The ash plume was spotted by a pilot and was visible in satellite images captured from space. It drifted over the sea at least 75 miles southeast of the volcano, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported.

No communities were affected by ashfall or were otherwise in danger as of Friday morning, said David Fee of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, a coordinating scientist with the observatory.

“This is a remote volcano,” he said.

The National Weather Service issued an alert, and air traffic was advised to steer clear of Shishaldin, though aviators were already avoiding the volcano well before Friday because of earlier activity, Fee said.

While Friday’s cloud, the largest yet of the series, was considered moderate, conditions at Shishaldin could worsen quickly.

“Shishaldin remains at a heightened level of unrest, and explosions may occur with little warning,” the observatory warned in a public statement. Friday’s explosion lasted about an hour to 90 minutes, U.S. Geological Survey scientist Matt Haney said.

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Editing by Steve Gorman & Kim Coghill)

Massive volcanic eruption in Alaska causes flight diversions

Alaska Volcano

(Reuters) – A volcano on the Alaska Peninsula erupted with little advanced warning over the weekend, spewing an ash cloud up to 20,000 feet (6,096 meters) high that prompted aviation warnings across the region, scientists said on Monday.

Mount Pavlof, one of the most active volcanoes on the peninsula, began erupting shortly after 4:00 p.m. Alaska Daylight Time on Sunday, said Jessica Larsen, coordinating scientist with the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute.

“Pavlof is known to us for having a pretty quick onset to eruptions, it doesn’t always give us long precursory signals,” Larsen said.

“If you look at some of the seismic data that we have, the intensity really ramped up pretty fast. It was quite abrupt,” she said.

Photos on the Alaska Volcano Observatory website showed the plume towering over the icy slopes of Mount Pavlof and drifting to the northwest.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a “red” aviation alert in response to the 20,000-foot-high ash cloud, which required that flights to be re-routed. The alert could affect local and regional air traffic, as well polar routes and cargo flights from Anchorage.

Larsen said the eruption did not pose any immediate danger to nearby communities on the peninsula, which were monitoring the ash fall. The closest residential area is Cold Bay, located 37 miles (60 km) southwest of Pavlof.

There have been more than 40 eruptions from Pavlof, including between May and November of 2014, when ash plumes also triggered aviation warnings. Such events can last weeks or months.

“This 20,000-foot ash cloud is not unusual for Pavlof at all,” Larsen said, adding that the highest recorded plume from the volcano was 49,000 feet.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)