Volcano of the Week #18 - Puyehue-Cordon Caulle

For the second time in the long history of this feature the volcano of the week is more accurately comprised of multiple volcanoes- in this case four or two (depending on how accurate you are being, all kinds of stratovolcanoes and fissure vents). There is a fault along the Andes which causes all of this volcanism. As this Chilean volcano has been erupting for a while now it's probably high time that I covered it. This eruption started on 3rd June and has caused flight chaos across the southern hemisphere (this definitely happens a lot these days) and the ash cloud has reached Cape Town, Buenos Aires and Melbourne. The eruption has been accompanied by many earthquakes which is characteristic of the plates here, the eruption has also been accompanied by violent storms. Around 3,000 people have been evacuated from the area however as many people have had to leave their livestock in the area this was not well received. The threat to livestock is large and Argentina have declared a state of emergency for farmers which is likely to be the biggest and longest lasting implication of this eruption. This has been seen in many previous eruptions such as Tambora and Laki which have caused loss of crop and famine. Another notable eruption of Puyehue-Cordon Caulle was in 1960 after the largest earthquake ever recorded showing again the unstable plate tectonics in Chile. My favourite thing about this volcano is probably the flora as the volcano is located in a temperature rainforest and then turns in tundra and desert which must be pretty spectacular. 

Stamps

My Daddy sent me a picture of a volcano stamp which lead me to search for more images of volcano stamps. Which obviously there are countless of as so many countries have volcanoes and are such big features of their landscapes. I love the Lesotho stamp which has a lovely scientific diagram, Iceland and Japan being so great have countless volcano stamps.

 Sadly there doesn't seem to be enough to warrant having a volcano stamp album but maybe I can make some.

Tenuous Volcanoes

This is going to be one of those everything that I have seen recently that slightly reminds me of a volcano posts. So it could be crap, rambling and boring or really amazing and insightful. Firstly this blog is about a year old (it's useful when you have a similar birthday to your blog) so that's possibly good and worth celebrating.

Firstly I've got another track for the upcoming and coming volcano club CD, still waiting for Alice's specially commissioned piece (see interview in Love, Lust and Lava) this video was actually sent to me by her brother. That family are very into volcano music. If anyone has more suggestions for the compliation please let me know.

I saw the film Le Quatrro Volte over the weekend which was fantastic. The opening and closing scenes consisted off an earthy smoking mound, which was very reminiscent of a volcano with lots of lovely little fumeroles. This is how charcoal is made, I suppose volcanoes can also make charcoal . The film has no other volcano references just a lot of lovely goats, a nice old man and a great tree. But it did give me an idea of how to make a volcano like structure and some good winter fuel.

Finally the newly opened Turner Margate gallery actually only has one Turner painting, which is of a volcano, the same painting that inspired the Turner to Warhol exhibition. It's of the Caribbean volcano Soufriere Hills which erupts fairly frequently. I think they were probably planning on having more Turners there but then they saw the volcano and thought that nothing else would stand up in comparison (which is how I frequently feel).

As I predicted the ash cloud was fine and I'm definitely flying to Sweden, YAY!