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Kilauea erupts, destroying webcam [video]

(www.youtube.com)
581 points zdw | 1 comments | 06 Dec 25 23:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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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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1. 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.