A major eruption followed a partial dome collapse in the crater of the Soufriere Hills volcano on the West Indies island of Montserrat during the daytime hours on 11 February 2010. McIDAS images of the GOES-12 visible channel data (above) showed the rapid east-southeastward expansion of the volcanic cloud following the eruption around 17:00... Read More

The Galeras volcano in Colombia (located in the Andes Mountains near Colombia’s border with Ecuador) experienced an explosive eruption around 00:43 UTC on 03 January 2010 (Washington VAAC advisory messages). McIDAS images of the GOES-11, GOES-14, and GOES-12 10.7 µm IR (top 3 panels) and 6.7/6.5 µm water vapor channel data (bottom 3 panels)... Read More

McIDAS images of GOES-11 and GOES-14 visible channel data (above) revealed a large hazy plume streaming northeastward from the Hawaiian Islands on 31 December 2009 – 01 January 2010. The primary source of this plume was ongoing emissions from the Kilauea volcano on “The Big Island” of Hawaii — the resulting... Read More

A comparison of GOES-11 and GOES-12 visible channel images (above) revealed an aerosol plume aloft that was oriented northwest-to-southeast over the western Great Lakes region on 13 July 2009. This example shows the value of forward scattering to help in the identification these kinds of aerosol plumes — note how the plume... Read More