It’s a twofer: the NASA Earth Observatory captured Klyuchevskaya and Bezymianny on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula erupting simultaneously. Pretty cool stuff. Like Sakurajima last week, both of these are composite volcanoes that live on the rim of the Pacific plate, which is a zone of active subduction. Volcanic rumblings in that area are never a surprise.
It’s as if we’ve caught a hint of a new competitive sport played out over a geologic scale – artistic erupting! While these two volcanoes really get points for being coordinated, I’ve still got to give Sakurajima the lead, though. I’m a sucker for volcanic lightning.