From News.com.au on the 8th of May.
TWO spectacular forces of nature seemed to be meeting in the skies of Chile yesterday as a volcanic eruption caused a lightning storm.
It may have looked like the storm was passing the Chaiten volcano but the lightning was caused by the static charge created by the friction of rocks and ash thrown into the air, The Times reported.
The result was an extraordinary sight as lightning flickered around the dust cloud in the fiery, orange glow of the volcano.
Geoscience Australia’s Alanna Simpson said the lightning storms were common in eruptions were lots of material was thrown into the sky.
“As long as there is a similar amount of of ash in the air and similar weather conditions there is no reason why it could not continue,” she said.
Ms Simpson said in the 1994 eruption at the Rabaul Caldera in Papau New Guinea one person was killed by a lightning strike generated by the ash cloud.
The Chaiten eruption was all the more spectacular because the volcano, 1300km south of Santiago, has been dormant for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, The Australian reported today.
The volcano, whose eruption has forced the evacuation of 4000 nearby residents, is part of a string of volcanoes running along the so-called Ring of Fire - an arc of active volcanoes extending north from the west coast of the Americas across the Alaskan-Siberian rim and south to Indonesia.
Chile hosts the second-most active volcanoes in the world behind Indonesia.
The Chaiten volcano began erupting on Friday. But the violence of the event increased dramatically yesterday as dust, gas and lava blasted fiercely out of the volcano, spreading ash across the region.
Residents living closest to the eruption were forced to use facemasks to avoid inhaling the ash, which is up to 15cm deep on the ground in some areas.
Chile’s National Emergency Office said fine ash was still falling and that visibility was poor.
Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma said: “We don’t know if this is a situation that will last days or weeks or even more.”
