Chile - Volcano eruption, amazing pictures!

General General Discussion
1

The world looks like it’s coming to an end… http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394503/Chile-volcano-causes-ash-cloud-lightning-tears-sky-apart.html

2

Enough already.

Just give Sauron the damn ring!

3

Those are some really cool pictures

4

Whatever you do, don’t cross the streams.

5

I just learned that it shoots the ash out at 450mph. I didnt know that. Also it says it conducts electricity, ESPECIALLY when wet. That would explain the lightning

6

amazing pics Irish.

Looks like narly pyroclastic eruptions & surges in the pics.

Pics from outer space of pyroclastic surges / eruptions from NASA & JPL

7

I love it when you talk dirty…

8

Golly, for a moment I thought I had clicked on the Weiner’s weenie thread. :jester:

9

Breath taking photos for sure, reminds me of the photos when Eyjafjallajokull blew her stack in Finnland last April. The lighting generated is shear raw energy, amazing really.

10

Wasn’t this supposed to happen on May 21?

I have been in this region and also to Chaiten just before the 2008 eruption there. It is some of the prettest county on earth.

11

12/21/12 according to the Mayans :wink:

12

The Mayans just ran out of ink.

Good find on the pics Irish

13

Both beautiful and scary at the same time. Awesome show of force from mother nature.

Just wondering. I suppose the heat from the eruption set off the thunderstorms / lighting?

14

Perhaps. My guess would be increased friction from the vast amount of ash particles erupted into the atmosphere creates a static charge that is then released as lightning.

15

Charlie Sheen just achieved Jedi status, and the gods rejoiced. - ZDL

16

And that is only because he has tiger blood. :smiley:

17

Idealized sequence of events that leads to lightning

  1. Starting state (particles might have already been charged by some previous process).

  2. Collisions lead to charge separation. For this to happen there has to be some difference in the electrical properties of the particles in the collisions.

  3. Some process, such as aerodynamic sorting, segregates the positively and negatively charged particles. This means that there are sections of the cloud that are more negative or positive than other sections.

  4. When the charge separation becomes too great, electricity will flow between the positive and negative regions of the cloud forming lightning and neutralizing the charge separation.

18

Moose-Knuckle, very interesting. I’m out of my lane on this type subject but find it interesting.

So I assume, since this was caused by differently charged ash particles, that this was not a “thunderstorm” with rain as most people associate lighting with.

I’ve seen cloud formations before with lighting in them that did not appear to strike the ground. This same principle works with water vapor as well?