Chile's Puyehue Volcano Erupts after Lying Dormant for 51 Years

Puyehue Volcano Brings Mordor Skies to Chile

June 6, 2011

New Scientist - Any more pictures like this and there will be calls for Puyehue volcano, near Osorno in southern Chile, to be renamed Mount Doom. Quiet for half a century, Puyehue erupted on Sunday, prompting the evacuation of 3500 people. Geologists say the sudden activity may have been triggered by last year's 8.8-magnitude earthquake.

The enormous cloud of ash that exploded from the volcano is estimated to be around 10 km high and 5 km wide, reports Chile's National Service of Geology and Mining.

Wind has already carried ash across the Andes, forcing the newly ash-carpeted tourist town of San Carlos de Bariloche to close its airport. Puyehue is located in the Puyehue-Cordon-Caulle range 870 kilometres south of the Chilean capital Santiago.

Santiago Rozas, mayor of nearby town Lago Ranco, told the Associated Press that a shift in wind direction on Sunday "means that we will have a rain of ash, with damage for the population and a threat to smallholder farming."

Last year, David Pyle at the University of Oxford suggested that an eruption would follow the 2010 Chilean earthquake. It's a case of history repeating, says Pyle, who analysed volcanic activity in Chile within a year of large earthquakes in 1906 and 1960.

"People have seen that volcanic activity can be triggered within 100 km of the earthquake, though no one knows the mechanisms behind this," Pyle told New Scientist.

One possibility might be an increase in stress levels in the ground underneath a volcano following a quake.

"The 2010 earthquake meant a fault system 500 km long slipped by a few metres at a depth of 20-30 km," says Pyle. The shift could have compressed the magma under the volcano, making it more likely to erupt, he suggests.

Following Japan's recent devastating quake, we can expect reports of increased volcanic activity in Japan, Russia and Indonesia in the next 6 to 12 months, Pyle says.

"I'd expect to see an increase in the number of eruptions, but the net effect won't be much different from the typical background activity of these volcanoes," he says.

Volcano Erupts in Chile (33 Photos)

June 8, 2011

Boston Globe - The eruption of the Puyehue volcano in the Andes mountains of southern Chile last weekend provided some spectacular images of the force of nature. Ash covers the landscape and thousands of people were evacuated from the surrounding rural communities. The volcano, which hasn't been active since 1960 when it erupted after an earthquake, sent its plume of ash 6 miles high across Argentina and toward the Atlantic Ocean.

Chile's Puyehue Volcano Erupts (21 Photos)

June 6, 2011

The Atlantic - On Saturday, a volcano in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle chain of south-central Chile erupted after lying dormant for more than 50 years. The government evacuated several thousand residents as Puyehue threw ash more than 6 miles (10 km) into the sky, pushing the plume toward neighboring Argentina. Authorities had already put the area around the volcano on alert after a flurry of earthquakes earlier on Saturday -- at one point, the tremors reached an average of 230 per hour. Collected here are a handful of spectacular photographs of the eruption this weekend and its effects in Chile and Argentina.