The most interesting volcano news

Current volcanic activity around the Earth seems rather mundane, but that's usually preferable for most of the population living near active volcanoes to the alternative of earthshaking catastrophic danger. It's always possible, given what might be brewing, that this is the calm before the eruption. Of course, it's easy to say that, given that something is eventually bound to erupt, like Etna did a couple of days ago (below).



Likely the most worried-about eruption is Katla in Iceland, which has been shaking a bit, but hasn't yet gone into a more worrisime pre-eruptive phase. According to the reports, Kilauea just keeps percolating along, with small lava flows emanating from the Pu'u O'o cone. Cleveland volcano in the Aleutians still has a lava dome that hasn't popped. The mountain volcanoes in Kamchatka and Chile continue to simmer.

So it is that the most interesting volcano news right now is underwater. The eruption off of La Hierro island of the Canary Island archipelago is producing clouds of eruptive material that are discoloring the water near the island. These clouds can be seen from space (see the picture). What I'm waiting for is the first submersible, preferably a ROV, to go down and take a look around. The other question of interest is how deep this eruption is, and thus how much of a chance there is that a new steaming ash island will emerge from the depths.

One other thing: the most potentially disastrous volcano news is from Bolivia's Uturuncu, but nothing might happen for centuries. Or not. The "or not" alternative could be really, really bad.