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Pavlof Volcano, one of Alaska’’s most active volcanoes, erupts in this picture taken on Sunday.
Pavlof Volcano, one of Alaska’’s most active volcanoes, erupts in this picture taken on Sunday. Photograph: Colt Snapp/AP
Pavlof Volcano, one of Alaska’’s most active volcanoes, erupts in this picture taken on Sunday. Photograph: Colt Snapp/AP

Alaska volcano spews ash cloud stretching 400 miles, grounding flights

This article is more than 8 years old

Strong winds have sent an ash cloud from Pavlof volcano soaring, forcing Alaska Airlines to halt flights and delay travel for thousands of passengers

One of Alaska’s most active volcanoes has emitted a 37,000ft (11,300-metre) ash cloud that has grounded flights, affecting thousands of travelers and cutting off remote communities in the west and north.

Pavlof volcano erupted on Sunday afternoon but strong winds on Monday pushed the cloud higher and into the heart of the state until it stretched over more than 400 miles (650km).

“It’s right in the wheelhouse of a lot of flights crisscrossing Alaska,” said geologist Chris Waythomas, of the US Geological Survey (USGS), part of the Alaska Volcano Observatory, along with the University of Alaska and the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines has canceled 41 flights involving six cities in the state, including all flights to and from Fairbanks. The airline said the canceled flights affected 3,300 passengers.

Flights to Barrow, Bethel, Kotzebue, Nome and Deadhorse also are canceled. The airline said it would resume its 54 regularly scheduled flights on Tuesday if conditions improved.

Pavlof volcano is 8,261 feet (2,500m) high and sits 625 miles (1,000km) south-west of Anchorage on the Alaska peninsula, the finger of land that sticks out from mainland Alaska toward the Aleutian islands.

Volcanic ash is angular and sharp and has been used as an industrial abrasive. The powdered rock can cause a jet engine to shut down. USGS geologists have compared it to flying into a sand blaster.

An eruption of Mount Redoubt in December 1989 sent out an ash cloud spanning 150 miles (240km) that flamed out the jet engines of a KLM flight carrying 231 passengers to Anchorage. The jet dropped more than two miles before pilots were able to restart the engines and land safely.

“We just simply will not fly when ash is present,” Egan said.

Waythomas had received no reports of ash falling in communities. The closest community, Cold Bay, is 37 miles (60km) south-west of the volcano, in the opposite direction to where the wind was blowing the ash.

Geologists call Pavlof an open-system volcano, Waythomas said. “The pathways that magma follows to the surface are pretty open in a volcanological sense,” Waythomas said. “They can convey magma and gas very easily. Magmas can move to the surface whenever they feel like it, more or less.”

The movement comes with little shaking of the ground, and the lack of earthquakes as an early warning of an eruption “makes us go crazy monitoring them”, Waythomas said.

The volcano, about 4.4 miles (7km) in diameter, has had 40 known eruptions. Its conical, nearly symmetrical shape indicates its eruptions tend to be less violent than the kind that blow the tops off mountains.

“It can erupt for periods of hours to days or it can go on for much longer periods of time,” Waythomas said. “It won’t erupt continuously for many months or a year. It will be intermittent. But the eruption cycle could go on for a while, or it could abruptly shut off and be done tomorrow.”

The USGS raised the volcano alert to its highest level, which warns of hazards both in the air and on the ground.

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