This is the top vent at the summit of Mount Redoubt in Alaska on March 21. Two days later and the volcano had erupted five times, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The ash from Alaskan volcanoes is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages. Airlines have cancelled flights and the Air Force Base in Anchorage has moved planes into shelters to stop any damage.
The 10,200-foot volcano is roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage and in the last eruption sent ash 150 miles away into the path of a KLM jet causing its four engines to flame out. The jet dropped more than 2 miles before the crew was able to restart all engines and land safely. The plane required $80 million in repairs.
The glacier on the slopes flows into the Drift river and the raised temperatures have increased the melt water run-off. The heavier ash falls fairly quickly but the fine ash is suspended for longer and is easily blown for miles by any atmospheric wind.
22 comments:
Are you sure that's the top of a volcano and not some publicity still from the latest Batman film?
It doesn't look as calm as that now, all black cloud and rumbles. A bit like Fleetwood when he's fallen over the dumpy into a fresh cowpat.
More like after I've just eaten a salami and onion pizza.
None of the above.
Tis my mother-in-law's face after a night on the tiles....
Pursuing investigations into the ridiculous life of my biographical subject I yesterday accompanied the idiot to Budget Rentals in Preston. For some absurd reason he wanted to hire a small furniture van, and when he realised I'd take him there he got enormously pleased, stopping off to buy me two tubs of peanut butter from Naturally on High. He himself got fourteen big bottles of grape juice.
And so we arrived. Then straight away in the yard I noticed a small couple: a thin brunette about twenty, arms covered in tattoos, and her male pa-a-a-artner who had only a few. They were being shown a truck. Then later, while waiting about in the little wooden office I saw them again, attended at the counter by a hipster with a Sheriff of Nottingham beard. Suddenly the girl said: "Hey, you've gone over the amount, that'll fine me fifty dollars on my card..." There was a pause, and she began crying. Meanwhile arrangements between her boyfriend and the Sheriff continued, as did the crying. Soon a woman appeared beside the Sheriff. She looked at my biographical subject. "Can I help you?" she said, and off he went into his crazy palaver about why he'd decided to leave Thornbury and take up residence in Ferntree Gully, giving her a full rundown on Melbourne real estate prices and why after months of enthusiasm he'd decided Epping was not a good choice after all, and so on, and did she think the banks were safe, and so on, meanwhile the girl has got her arms and head on the counter now, weeping with enormous grief, until suddenly she rushes out and throws herself down beside the entrance, laying there, totally overcome. "And how about insurance?" says my biographical subject.
Eventually we left, walking past and she was still at it, but only sobbing now, hugging her knees.
"I was right about Epping," droned my biographical subject, "Look at the sort I'd have to live with."
He'd decided they were from Epping, this pair, and he was sure of it. How in hell I don't know, but lunacy is a power by golly; a certainty, mystery, privacy, secret heartache.
-Robert.
Institute for Study of Dust.
Monash.
I want to see these psychiatrists, these little tin dictators, these vain money-grubbing bullshitters, these FUCKING QUACKS!- frantic to make a name for themselves, tell the truth!- just once!- the lying perjuring smug little shitbuckets! Hell, what hope do the mentally ill have, bossed about by numbskull bastards like this.
I often wonder if R.H ever gets tired of plagiarizing and indeed his own delusions of a better psychiatric prognosis?
m.z. xxx
Plagiarising what? From where? Details please. Bullshitter.
I had an MZ motorcycle, Czechoslovakian bike, rode it from Copenhagen to Afghanistan, did I plagiarise that too?
Fucknut!
ha ha. You bum. My theory on schizophrenia could make you more famous than Freud.
Well some darlings will be cheered (others estatic I guess) to hear I've decided to stop sneaking my postings among comments. And while that is true, and while I've only ever done it when the original is a bit of a donkey, my career as a poet will nevertheless continue. Chew on that!
A poet is never mercenary, he does not want wealth, he wants fame, that's all: lots of attention. I myself write to thrill the wineglass inner suburbs, hoping to score from it a Gone-With-The-Wind style house in Hoppers Crossing. Cynical, yes, shifty too, but so are they. Idiots.
There's a hierarchy of fools, the most intelligent being most easily bought. How true. Or why would carrot cake be so exclusive. ha ha.
-Robert.
Victim of Circumstance.
It's 'open day' at Brighton cemetery this Sunday, guided tours etc, gold coin donation (meaning they'll get one dollar from me)*.
Over the road is La Ponda, the old bugger: Toorak Auctions. He'll be closed.
-Robert.
*Broadcast on 3MP, among all the funeral ads.
Henry Miller, with his bicycle and his bald head, went to Paris to write fuck and get it published.
Wooh! How startling! But who reads Tropic of Cancer anymore?
Squizzy Taylor is buried at Brighton cemetery, with La Ponda across the road. How poignant. La Ponda could teach him plenty in the way of finesse.
And that's it, that's all, loving you in a thousand pieces, a hurricane, a storm, love is a liabilty, a defeat, it made me a dunce.
um, glad yerve got THAT off yer chest, Robbert.
(or - out of sight, out of mind?)
Davo you old kunt, still going? Good heavens, proves if you keep moving they can't bury you. I hear the vice squad grabbed your caravan, well you should know better; one-horse country towns like a mobile library, but not that girly trash you hand out! ha ha ha. You old perv!
Jayne, still loving your mother-in-law, the Godzilla that haunts your marriage.
Robbert, the richness of your experiences says GET A BLOG!
And you are a Phillip Pulman fan?
Guided tour of Cheltenham Pioneer Cemetary coming up in May.
My great-uncle drove Squizzy Taylor in his hire car.
Mz, he couldn't plagiarise anybody, no-one else could be that over the top, it is pure Robbert.
Davo, you're back. I'll make a visit but somehow I think Robbert has probably beaten me to it.
Thank you Miss Jahteh, gracious as always. Well I've been writing this, so I may as well post it. La Ponda is probably dead now, it's a dozen years since I've seen him, and he was an old man then, a big wide Dutchman with a lisping voice. He ran his auction like some old Pope Benedict, especially when someone mucked up "I'm not taking any more bids from you," he'd order, from up in his pulpit. He demanded fifty dollars deposit for a bidding number too, handed out by his wife in a little front office, and she was cheerful, friendly, a laughing woman, laughing at old La Ponda as well. They were a show, the pair of them, a cultural display, for Ozites accustomed to pie and sauce. Well here was the real Europe my dear -not Carlton and Fitzroy, Brunswick, Richmond; here was old Europe itself, La Ponda barging through it all: Brahms, Mozart, all the great painters, it was nothing, it was him, the entire Renaissance.
And a nice bloke really. He was. Grumpy, pedantic, cuddly old bugger.
I'd never heard of Pulman, had to look him up.
I hate that fantasy tripe. Science Fiction as well.
My own writing is philanthropy, hence I am loved.
Rh, I asked about Pulman because 'dust' is mentioned in the film 'The Golden Compass' which is based on one of his books. I love fantasy writing and films. I can't wait to see 'Harry Potter' in July and in Gold Class as my 50c tin is filling.
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