Product Code Database
Novarupta is a volcano located on the Alaska Peninsula on a slope of Trident Volcano in Katmai National Park and Preserve, about southwest of Anchorage. Novarupta was formed in 1912, during the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, in which it released 30 times the volume of magma of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
At least two larger eruptions occurred in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during the 19th century: the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora ( of tephra) and the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa ( of tephra).
The Novarupta eruption occurred about from the peak of Mount Katmai and below the post-eruption Mount Katmai summit. During the eruption a large quantity of magma erupted from beneath the Mount Katmai area, resulting in the formation of a wide, funnel-shaped vent and the collapse of Mount Katmai's summit, creating a deep, caldera.
The eruption ended with the extrusion of a lava dome of rhyolite that Volcanic plug the vent. The high and wide dome it created forms what is now referred to as Novarupta.
Despite the magnitude of the eruption, no deaths directly resulted. Eyewitness accounts from people located downwind in the path of a thick ash cloud described the gradual lowering of visibility to next to nothing. Ash threatened to contaminate drinking water and destroyed food resources, but the were aided in their survival by traditional knowledge passed down through generations from previous eruptions. However, the Native villages experiencing the heaviest ash falls were abandoned and the inhabitants relocated.
The eruption that formed the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is one of the few in recorded history to have produced welded tuff, resulting in numerous fumaroles that persisted for 15 years.
|
|
