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Eruption of Lewotobi Laki-laki in Indonesia

By Scott Bachmeier •

Himawari-9 Ash Height product [click to play MP4 animation]

The Lewotobi Laki-laki volcano in Indonesia erupted at 0935 UTC on 17 June 2025 — and the radiometrically-retrieved Ash Height product from the NOAA/CIMSS Volcanic Cloud Monitoring site (above) indicated that some of the volcanic ash reached altitudes around 16.2 km (a 1645 UTC Darwin VAAC advisory listed ash to altitudes of FL530 or 53000 ft).

The corresponding Ash Loading product (below) showed that initially there were high levels of ash loading, which then decreased in time as the volcanic cloud expanded across the region.

Himawari-9 Ash Loading product [click to play MP4 animation]

Himawari-9 Ash RGB images created using Geo2Grid (below) revealed that the volcanic cloud was composed of either primarily ash (shades of red), a mixture of ash and SO2 (shades of yellow) or primarily SO2 (shades of light green).

Himawari-9 Ash RGB images [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

In a NOAA-20 VIIRS Day/Night Band image after sunset (below), the bright nighttime glow of the summit of still-erupting Lewotobi was very apparent — and a subtle hazy signature of the volcanic cloud (northwest, west and southwest of Lewotobi) was also evident.

NOAA-20 (mislabeled as NPP) VIIRS Day/Night Band image valid at 1647 UTC or 11:37 PM local time on 17 June [click to enlarge]

Categories: Geo2Grid, Himawari-9, NOAA-20, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, VIIRS, Volcanic activity