Kilauea erupts, destroying webcam [video]

The threat level for airplanes is set to orange... for anyone dumb enough to fly over an erupting volcano. The orange flying from the ground would be all the motivation I need to stay clear of it.

It was an awesome video, though.

> The threat level for airplanes is set to orange... for anyone dumb enough to fly over an erupting volcano.

Even 180km away from the eruption, airplanes can be seriously damaged [1].

Jet engines really, really do not like to ingest anything else than air and, maybe, a tad bit of water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_009

Volcanic ash is particularly bad because it is so abrasive, having been freshly formed without any opportunity for erosion to smooth it down like regular dust.

An erupting volcano can spew ash over a large distance. When Eya.... that Icelandic volcano (that's hard to spell because I don't know Icelandic) erupted several years ago, the ash cloud traveled far enough to disrupt travel over most of Europe for a few days.

That's not the only problem - volcanic ash also has a low enough melting point that it'll melt in the combustion chamber of a jet engine and leave glassy deposits on cooler components.

Eyjafjallajökull

Prevailing winds are key. Reykjavíkings told me that during that big eruption many moons ago, all traffic to Europe was ended but traffic to North American continued merrily along.

A favourite tidbit from that time: Icelandic post released stamps of that eruption and it was used for European postage (mail to Europe).

https://findyourstampsvalue.com/news/stamps-created-from-eyj...

(Stamp is marked "Bref til Evropu" - European postage)

I dunno... Different times, different risk tolerance.

Back in 1980, my dad was sitting at his desk in Bellevue one morning when news came in that Mt. St. Helens was erupting. Him and a pilot friend had the presence of mind to head straight to the local airport and rent a plane.

"Be careful not to head South. Mt. St. Helens is erupting, and you sure don't want to get close that by accident."

"Oh, yeah, sure. No way we'd do something like that."

He has this amazing framed aerial photo of the mountain with the ash plume rising. Evidently, the flight home was pure chaos, bobbing and weaving to avoid dozens of midair collisions since every other pilot in the Seattle area had had the same idea, but 45 minutes later.