San Miguel (Chaparrastique) volcano eruption in El Salvador

[Macrocane]

Today, a suddenly eruption occurred in San Miguel volcano, El Salvador. There were no major signals of an eruption until 8:00 am this morning, the eruption occurred at 10:30 am and several towns are evacuating as ashes are falling over them. The government is still trying to organize and give information to the media, there are no reports of deaths yet.

[cycloneye]

Impressive images. Hopefully,nothing bad occurs in terms of people being injured or killed.

[Macrocane]

Some reports said that at least 3500 have been evacuated and the ashes have fallen in 5 of the 14 departments of El Salvador.

This is a sequence of the satellite images of the eruption. You can see how the ash cloud has been moving west through a significant portion of the country:



An iompressive colored satellite picture during the eruption.



The roads and the town have been covered by ashes and vidibilita has been reduced significantly.

[Macrocane]

A video of the eruption as seen in a webcam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINZBfkTEWU#t=126

[FireRat]

Oh wow, thanks for posting Macrocane!!
I have some family in this area and wouldn't have known about the event if I had not read this thread!

[Macrocane]

You're welcome FireRat! I hope your family is OK

[tropicana]

great video and pictures! wow!

[tolakram]

Video link above no longer works.

Here's another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emFhUkw5Rys

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emFhUkw5Rys[/youtube]

and another.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwVR09TuTrI[/youtube]

[Macrocane]

Thanks Tolakram!

The activity of the volcano has decreased a lot but a small plume of gases is still visible over the crater. At least 2200 are in shelters but fortunately no serious injuries or deaths have been reported. Here's a recent picture of the volcano:



The ash cloud has dissipated but overnight a little ash fell in San Salvador 105 Km west (60 miles) and even in the town of Colon, 130 km (80 miles) west of the eruption.

Here's a picture of the ash I've found over my car this morning.

[Macrocane]

The activity of the volcano diminished abruptly after the December 29 eruption but in mid January it started to increase again and has been gradually increasing everyday. This afternoon another eruption occurred but was significantly weaker than the December event. The ash from this small eruption fell in the volcan flanks and no towns or cities were affected this time. The vulcanologists are expecting a stronger eruption with possible lava flows given the type of micro quakes that have been registered.

Here's a video of today's eruption, it's in Spanish but basically says that the ash cloud reached a height of 500 meters above the crater and was weaker than the December eruption but evacuation plans have already been done in case of a major eruption:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyNn_2NuW3I[/youtube]