Kelimutu One of the best aspects of Google’s Chromecast is the outstanding array of images in its ambient mode, which serves as a wallpaper slideshow. The photographs primarily feature outdoor locations or wildlife, allowing the wanderlusting individual stuck indoors to sample virtually the planet’s riches. Google has no monopoly on this sort of collection. Microsoft has […]
Etna Vortex Rings One of the planet’s most famous and active volcanos sits on the island of Sicily, where the African and Eurasian Plates converge. Mt. Etna currently rises 11,014 feet (3,357 meters) above the Ionian Sea. It gains this altitude in under 12 miles from the water! The word “currently” must reside in the
Pico de Orizaba – Mexico’s High Point Mexico does not often garner the reputation of a nation with a lot of mountainous splendor. The sandy biomes – deserts and beaches – yes. Soaring peaks – not so much. As we learned when Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston visited the Sierra Madre, however, perhaps that non-mountainous stature
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The Ring of Fire Close your eyes and picture a real-world volcano. Where are you on the globe? You might be at one of Italy’s famous spewers, Etna or Vesuvius. You might be in Hawaii on Mauna Kea or Mauna Loa. Maybe you went to Africa’s High Point, Kilimanjaro. Or, likely, you’re in one of many spots where continental
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Mauna Loa For approximately 28 million years, the Hawaiian hotspot has belched out islands and atolls. The hotspot sits in the same position, spewing upward from the mantle, while the Pacific Plate moves above it. This combination created the string we know as the Hawaiian Islands. Eight major isles comprise the archipelago. Each was once
The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes “The sight that flashed into view…was one of the most amazing visions ever beheld by mortal eye. The whole valley as far as the eye could reach was full of hundreds, no thousands–literally tens of thousands–of smokes curling up from its fissured floor…It was as though all the
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Mount Edgecumbe Just over 100 miles south of Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park resides a stratovolcano known to the Tlingit as L’ux. The name means “to flash” or “blinking,” a fascinating moniker for a volcano, ostensibly because the Tlingit first encountered the mountain while it produced smoke or erupted. In an interesting etymological confluence, lux is
Mount Rainier – Washington’s High Point Mount Rainier is one of the most famous, striking, and prominent peaks in the United States. This beast of a crag racks up an impressive list of superlatives. At 14,417 feet above sea level, the mountain is the High Point of Washington, as well as the eponymous National Park in which she
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The Yellowstone Supervolcano Some National Parks prominently feature or owe their existence to volcanoes. Mount Rainier is a stratovolcano. Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park certainly contains fiery mountains. Crater Lake National Park is the remnant of an extinct volcano. Less prominent parks, including Lassen Volcanic in California and Katmai in Alaska, highlight combustible histories. But, the largest
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The Decade Volcanoes On 22 December 1989, the United Nations General Assembly designated the oncoming decade – the 1990s – as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. The gist was to reduce the loss of life and property due to tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, storms, droughts, landslides, and volcanoes. The resolution intended to identify and study
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