Raoul island erupts

Raoul island, 1000 kilometers north of New Zealand, erupted at 8.30am yesterday (17 March). The eruption threw up mud, rock and steam from a vent in the Green Lake area, part of one of the island’s two calderas. The New Zealand Herald has a great map and series of photos. Not so easy to find on most maps but here’s a Google Earth placemark.

A small eruption but it sadly it seems that one of the team of New Zealand conservationists working on the island is missing having gone to do a routine water temperature check just before the eruption. A rescue mission is being mounted.

The island’s last eruption was in November 1964. For geological background check out this overview or this great booklet.

Wikipedia already has a good description of the eruption – what an amazing site!

Welcome!

So after a few days wondering how to start this blog a “hot volcano” triggers me into action – see next post.

My plan is to write about volcanoes I’m watching. Because they’re erupting, or because they’re hot in some other way.

I worked at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory in the early stages of the eruption there in the 90s. During some lulls in activity did some research and wrote a PhD.

I just moved to Seattle and am keeping an eye on Mt Rainier from my 41st floor downtown office. I’m working for Zillow.com, a consumer focused real estate site that just launched in beta. We’ve had a lot of blog coverage so I figured it was about time to get engaged in this new world. I just started a hot volcanoes lens on squidoo too.

Hoping this will be more successful than my blocked Blogspot attempts when I was living behind the Great Firewall of China last year!