The Indonesian Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation has downgraded the alert level for Mount Kelud, and allowed villagers evacuated from the slopes of the mountain to return to their homes. Since I can’t translate Indonesian, I can’t give you the full technical details, but it seems that there have been two major developments since the intense seismicity of two weekends ago:
- Last week a lava dome gradually rose out of the crater lake, and in the end pushed all the water out – good news for those worrying about lahars (volcanic mud flows).
- This fairly minor eruptive activity seems to have been sufficient to relieve the pressure that had been building up in Kelud’s magma chamber, because seismic activity has fallen away significantly in recent days
Before everyone gets too comfortable, though, the soothsayers are still predicting an eruption within the next week. One of them apparently feeds the spirit of the mountain coffee. What a waste.
Nice plan for content warnings on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Now you need a Mastodon/Fediverse button on this blog.