Mount Merapi erupted in Indonesia - many villages covered with ash

12pm local time Merapi erupted with reports and video of a 7 km high ash plume , Mount Merapi is no stranger to eruptions and it remains to be seen the scale of this one but there sure is a lot of ash.

The eruption throughout the day blocked out the sun. At least eight villages near the volcano have been affected by volcanic ash, an officer at one of Merapi’s observation posts said.

Images broadcast on local outlet Kompas TV showed ash-covered houses and roads at a village near the volcano, located on Java Island.

The 2,963 metre-high (9,721 feet) Merapi is one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes. Its last major eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced the evacuation of some 280,000 residents.

Saturday’s was Merapi’s most powerful eruption since 1930, when about 1,300 people were killed. An eruption in 1994 left about 60 people dead.
www.aljazeera.com...

It's a stratovolcano which means they can have Plinian eruptions, these eruptions are often accompanied by deadly pyroclastic flow. The footage of that ash made me feel we could see a pyroclastic explosion. But you never can tell for certain with volcanoes.
Merapi, is quite an active volcano in volcanologist/geological speak. Now, if it was Toba, or worse still Tambora in Indonesia, both super volcanos, I would be a lot more concerned, particularly Tambora. When Tambora last erupted, but not to it's full potential in 1805(?) it killed 92,000 people and still holds the world record.
I read something recently saying they had been picking up and expecting a couple of Indonesian volcanoes to erupt, but for the life of me I can't remember which two or where I saw the article.
Rainbows
Jane

a reply to: angelchemuel

And the 535 A.D. volcanic activity.....www.amazon.com...=sr_1_5?crid=QSH4U6JJK1B3&keywords=cat astrophe&qid=1678568136&sprefix=catas%2Caps%2C107&sr=8-5Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World ...the kind of global dimming that creates food shortages.

It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new world—essentially the modern world as we know it today—began to emerge.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

Oooh! Thank you for that
Rainbows
Jane

It must suck for the villagers,this volcano goes off quite often lately,but they keep coming back as they have nowhere else.
Real bad news to be breathing in that dust.

Something else that must suck in the same country is the giant ongoing mud volcano-still after more than 10 years its pouring out toxic mud that is useless to grow food,and is claiming village after village-The locals make their money by risking their lives to strip metal out of mud filled factories and houses.
That was caused by an oil company drilling IIRC.
static01.nyt.com...
It just keeps on growing,no can can stop it until its done-then the entire area is likley to collapse into a crater as there is now a giant empty cavern underground with a super heavy mud lake on top.

All that and the tsunami as well in the last fw years,pretty unlucky.

Live stream from Merapi Volcano , all seems quiet at the moment.