For the first time in roughly 12,000 years, the Hayli Gubbi volcano in Ethiopia’s Afar region has erupted. The long-dormant shield volcano popped off Sunday with a blast locals described as sounding like a bomb, spewing thick plumes of ash high enough into the sky to disrupt any aircraft passing by at international flight altitudes.
No casualties have been reported. Mostly because nobody is dumb enough to live in a place geologists nickname “the Gateway to Hell.” That’s not to be confused with the other Gateway to Hell, because there are two.
The other one is located in Turkmenistan’s Karakum desert. It was a gigantic hole, raging with a natural gas fire that had been burning since 1971 and only died out this year.
Getting back to the Gateway to Hell in Ethiopia, nearby pastoral communities’ grazing lands are now covered in ash, poised to make life tougher in a notoriously challenging region.
WATCH: A Volcano in Ethiopia Just Erupted for the First Time in 12,000 Years
Satellite images captured the plume drifting over the Red Sea, then stretching across Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, and into India. That prompted Pakistan’s Meteorological Department to issue warnings, while Air India canceled several flights out of precaution.
Hayli Gubbi sits atop one of the most geologically active spots on Earth: the Afar triple junction, where three tectonic plates are always threatening to pull apart. It isn’t the only volcano in the region.
Standing in stark contrast to Hayli Gubbi is the Erta Ale volcano, which is pretty much constantly erupting. The nearby Dabbahu volcano is active but less so, last erupting in 2005, creating a large fissure in the ground that’s still there today.
Volcanic ash advisories report plumes climbing up to 49,000 feet, and satellite sensors detected a massive release of sulfur dioxide. Volcanic lightning crackled through the ash as winds carried layers of the plume in different directions.
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