Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren volcabam here it seems like a scenario tailor made
Speaker 1: for a cheesy disaster film, the next Big Thing on Netflix,
Speaker 1: or a soon to be sci fi network classic. A
Speaker 1: rumbling volcano on a remote tropical island. A monster is
Speaker 1: hurricane barreling relentlessly towards it, lava, lightning, stinging rain, flooding,
Speaker 1: man eating sharks dropping out of the sky. It strike
Speaker 1: that last part. This isn't Sharknado, but the odd coupling
Speaker 1: of active volcano and hurricane still can be pretty cool
Speaker 1: and scary, and it's very real. When a hurricane meets
Speaker 1: a volcano, and it happens probably more often than you think,
Speaker 1: some strange and wondrous sparks begin to fly. How big
Speaker 1: those sometimes literal sparks become depends on a few key factors,
Speaker 1: of course, including the strength of the hurricane, how active
Speaker 1: the volcano is, and the topography surrounding the volcano. Because
Speaker 1: of those variable it's almost impossible to accurately predict what
Speaker 1: will happen when a big storm settles over a big volcano.
Speaker 1: But lightning, lava, rain, and winds are all possibilities. We
Speaker 1: spoke with Stephen Bussinger, a professor in the Department of
Speaker 1: Meteorology at the University of Hawaii, who admits we always
Speaker 1: get excited when a hurricane comes by in Hawaii. The
Speaker 1: volcano Kilauea on the Island of Hawaii, also known as
Speaker 1: the Big Island, has been actively spouting off since nine
Speaker 1: It's latest stretch, which began in mid May, has spute
Speaker 1: lava from the volcano, destroying seven hundred houses and adding
Speaker 1: more than eight hundred and fifty acres. That's about three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty three hectares of new land to the
Speaker 1: Big Island. But in August of researchers from the U
Speaker 1: S Geological Survey said activity from Kilauea's fission number eight,
Speaker 1: the largest and most active, has decreased to only a glow.
Speaker 1: It's not just the lava that makes volcanoes dangerous, though.
Speaker 1: Volcanoes shoot vast amounts of into the sky that can
Speaker 1: contribute to a lot of rain and flooding. Oregon State
Speaker 1: University's Volcano World website explains that the ash thrown into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere can attract and collect water droplets, creating more
Speaker 1: rain and lightning in the immediate area. When a tropical
Speaker 1: cyclone or hurricane heavy with rain and strong winds is
Speaker 1: added to that already volatile volcanic weather mix, things can
Speaker 1: become even diceier. Bussenger said, its circulation is more vigorous.
Speaker 1: People can be killed by the heavy winds that result
Speaker 1: or the lightning that results. Bussenger has a pH d
Speaker 1: in atmospheric sciences and has been tracking storms, including ones
Speaker 1: that interact with volcanoes, at the University of Hawaii for
Speaker 1: some twenty five years. Here's a historical example. Mount Pinatubo
Speaker 1: in the Philippines blew its top the second largest volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption of the twentieth century, when Typhoon Union brought heavy
Speaker 1: rains just as the volcano was erupting. The volcanic ash
Speaker 1: and rock that Pinatubo coughed up was washed down the
Speaker 1: volcano slopes and flows known as lahars over the next
Speaker 1: four years. Those lahars, originally prompted by Yunia and later
Speaker 1: egged on by other storms and rainy seasons, eventually caused
Speaker 1: more damage than the eruption itself. After observing tropical storm
Speaker 1: Flossy roll over Kilauea, in Bussenger and colleague Andre patent
Speaker 1: Hius measured something else, a marked increase in lightning. They
Speaker 1: explained it in a paper in the journal Geophysical Research
Speaker 1: Letters in quote, in the clean atmosphere, you have large
Speaker 1: droplets form around few particles, and those large droplets tend
Speaker 1: to fall out before these large droplets have a chance
Speaker 1: to get up into the upper atmosphere where freezing takes place.
Speaker 1: It's freezing that's required for electrification. When you have pollution
Speaker 1: from a volcano that's producing lots of condensation particles, a
Speaker 1: cloud condensation nuclei we call it. Then you get many droplets.
Speaker 1: Those smaller droplets don't rain out, and they're more easily
Speaker 1: lofted above the freezing level, and then you do get
Speaker 1: charge separation electrification. By early August eighteen, just before Hurricane
Speaker 1: Hector swung near the southern side of the Big Island,
Speaker 1: seven tropical cyclones had already made landfall across the Hawaiian
Speaker 1: islands since Kilauea began. As the latest run eruptions. The
Speaker 1: three most recent, according to the Weather Channel where Flossy
Speaker 1: in Hurricane Zel and Hurricane Darby in with Kilauea showing
Speaker 1: few signs of abating, Hawaii may be facing several more
Speaker 1: chances at hurricane versus volcano meetings. But even if a
Speaker 1: tropical storm doesn't directly strike the big island, even if
Speaker 1: it doesn't make landfall and glide over Kilauea, even if
Speaker 1: the rains and lightning are somehow held to a minimum,
Speaker 1: can still stir things up around Hawaii. Some of those byproducts,
Speaker 1: given the alternative, might even be welcomed there. The heavy
Speaker 1: moist air of a hurricane can help clean the air
Speaker 1: of the bigger ash particles from a volcanic eruption, and
Speaker 1: a good windy storm is always welcomed by some types
Speaker 1: in the islands. Passenger said, it's going to kick up
Speaker 1: some holacious surf. Today's episode was written by John Donovan
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff has merchandise now.
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