Volcanic Passions

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Katmai National Park, Alaska

I know today is the anniversary of another important event, but I see that it is also the anniversary of the beginning of the eruption in 1912 of Novarupta, one of the complex of vents making up Mt. Katmai, located on the Aleutian Peninsula of Southwest Alaska.

This was the largest volcanic eruption on the North American continent of the 20th Century, thirty times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. More than 7 cubic miles of ash was erupted in only 60 hours, covering 46,000 square miles in greater than 0.40 inch of ash. According to Robert Griggs, who explored the area several years later for the National Geographic Society:

"The magnitude of the eruption can perhaps be best realized if one could imagine a similar outburst centered in New York City. All of Greater New York would be buried under from ten to fifteen feet of ash; Philadelphia would be covered by a foot of gray ash and would be in total darkness for sixty hours; Washington and Buffalo would receive a quarter of an inch of ash, with a shorter period of darkness. The sound of the explosion would be heard in Atlanta and St. Louis, and the fumes noticed as far awa y as Denver, San Antonio, and Jamaica." (Robert F. Griggs, National Geographic Magazine, 1917, v. 81 no. 1, p. 50)

The pyroclastic flow filled the neighboring valley, thereby creating what is now the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The picture above was taken from the ranger station overlooking the valley. From there, you can hike down to the floor on a short trail. I've been there several times - it is an absolute moonscape, made all the more remarkable by the knowledge that the ash is, in places, hundreds of feet deep. Fascinating stuff.

Of course, I daren't mention this to my seven year old. One of her classmates recently brought in the DVD of the Discovery Channel's Pompeii: The Last Day. After watching it, she spent several days demanding loudly to know how I was so sure there are no volcanoes in Virginia. I went to fairly great lenghts on the topics of plate techtonics, the Pacific Ring of Fire and so on. I also assured her that if there were a volcano in Virginia, somebody would have found it by now. Finally, in response to her further demand, I had to give her my absolute promise that volcanoes are non-migratory and would therefore not come here from the West Coast. Eventually, I mollified her, but not by much. I'm afraid a fresh visit to the subject so soon after our last talk would only, as it were, cause her to erupt again.