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Kilauea erupts, destroying webcam [video]

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581 points zdw | 7 comments | 06 Dec 25 23:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.84s | source | bottom
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accrual ◴[07 Dec 25 01:29 UTC] No.46178399[source]▶
It's wild to see this footage safely behind a monitor. Kind of macabre to ponder but I wonder if the victims of Pompeii had a similar experience. The last we see is a hailstorm of ash and molten lava raining down then signal lost.
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1. toss1 ◴[07 Dec 25 02:49 UTC] No.46178723[source]▶
iirc, Pompeii was a pyroclastic flow [0], a fast-moving current of hot gas and volcanic matter with speeds between 100-700 km/hr and temperatures up to 1000°C. So, probably something like that, but a lot bigger, faster, and arriving faster from further away.

I was surprised how long the camera lasted getting buried. It'd be a not good end.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow

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2. fsckboy ◴[07 Dec 25 03:03 UTC] No.46178792[source]▶
i just posted a sister comment to yours about the Mt St Helens explosion, with a picture from 1980, and then i noticed that they are calling (it's a non technical article) what rained down in the photograph onto the camera and photographer "pyroclastic flow" and it looks very similar to what happened here.
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3. asdfman123 ◴[07 Dec 25 03:34 UTC] No.46178929[source]▶
Yeah, they likely saw it racing down the mountain and then met their doom fairly immediately.
4. db48x ◴[07 Dec 25 10:23 UTC] No.46180668[source]▶
This is not a pyroclastic flow and doesn’t look even remotely similar. The problem is that you’re comparing a very close up image of some lava falling on a camera to videos taken from tens of miles away from Mt St Helens. The scale and nature of the event are completely different.

Weirdly if you are going to be hit by a pyroclastic flow then it won’t be moving across your field of view at all. It’ll just be getting bigger and angrier–looking for the minute or two that you have left in your life.

5. kzrdude ◴[07 Dec 25 11:12 UTC] No.46180888[source]▶
Just to add, there are two main categories of volcanism, shield volcanoes (hot spots, mid ocean ridges) and stratovolcanoes (continental and subduction zone volcanoes). Hawaii is the first kind ("tourist friendly"), Vesuvius at Pompeii is the latter kind (not friendly). The main difference is the silica content, the stratovolcano lava is sticky and viscous; it gets stuck and things get explosive and nasty.

We have a lot of stratovolcanoes around the pacific rim so it's eruptions like those that we should compare with Pompeii, and not really Hawaii.

The two categories also produce, in general, different kinds of rock.

replies(1): >>46182611 #
6. pixl97 ◴[07 Dec 25 15:55 UTC] No.46182611[source]▶
https://youtu.be/T02pJdKARLo

Here is a pyroclastic flow from two weeks ago. In the first minute you can watch it boil a rainforest to tree trunks. That is an insane amount of heat to do that, green stuff is full of water and doesnt like to burn.

7. pixl97 ◴[07 Dec 25 15:56 UTC] No.46182617[source]▶
https://youtu.be/T02pJdKARLo?si

This is what a pyroclastic flow looks like.