A few things I noticed this weekend concerning volcanoes

[Tri-State_1925]

1. I'm not complaining about it, but for some reason meteorologists seem feel that volcanoes fall somewhere in their area of expertise. Same goes with earthquakes. Seems to have been the case for many years now...not sure how that all started. At least with something like fall foliage, you know that the weather plays a part.

2. I haven't looked into it, but apparently volcanologists don't know too much about volcanoes -- at least one that has eruption potential. CNN had a volcaologist on Saturday and they were asking her simple questions about Mt. St. Helens erupting. Basically she cut them off said that if you want to know about what's going on with St. Helens, ask a geologist. She said that all she is concerned with is the management and evacuation of people around the volcano. Thought that was pretty interesting.

3. Will the media ever give any love this month to the Mt. Pinatubo eruption? I mean while they are looking back...there were other eruptions besides St. Helens and Vesuvius in world history.

[OklahomaWeather]

I guess I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but I know that ash certainly does fall (no pun intended..) within the field of meteorology. The synoptic and mesoscale features can significantly affect humans and certainly for aviation forecasting.

[Shoshana]

re: 3. above...

Don't have cable so I can't see for myself... they're just talking Vesuvius and Mt St Helen's?

Cause I heard on ABC news now where a reporter was askin about the diff between Mt St Helen's and .Kilauea...

Sheesh... there's lots of volcanoes past and present to talk about...

Krakatoa ... Etna ...Santorini ... Mauna Loa ... Mt Fuji ... the one on Mansarratt, and of course the one no one likes to hear about, Yellowstone. And that's just the ones I thought of first.

[Aslkahuna]

Well, Vulcanology and Meteorology are both branches of Geophysics so there's a connection there. Scientists in the Planetary Atmospheric field of study need to know something about volcanoes since they need to model the effects of eruptions upon an atmospheric system. I don't know about other Mets, but I became interested in volcanoes and earthquakes before I became interested in weather and have remained so over the years-even so far as to have a textbook on Volcanoes, and having plowed through Richter's College Textbook on Seismology at least twice besides having several books on the subject in my personal Library. However, when it comes to the popular media, don't ever expect them to provide any valuable information since their target audience is well below us on this board when it comes to knowing about volcanoes and their history.

Steve