Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogo bam here with a classic
Speaker 1: episode from the podcast archives. Hurricanes and volcanoes are two
Speaker 1: of the most fear inspiring and all inspiring natural disasters
Speaker 1: that we humans contend with. In this classic, we talk
Speaker 1: about what happens when they team up. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogle bam here. It seems like a scenario tailor
Speaker 1: made for a cheesy disaster film, the next big thing
Speaker 1: on Netflix, or a soon to be sci Fi network classic.
Speaker 1: A rumbling volcano on a remote tropical island, a monsters
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 hurricane meets a volcano,
Speaker 1: and it happens probably more often than you think, some
Speaker 1: strange and wondrous sparks begin to fly. How big those
Speaker 1: 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 variables, 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 Bustinger, 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 n
Speaker 1: It's latest stretch, which began in mid May, has sputed
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: and forty three hectors of new land to the Big Island.
Speaker 1: But in August, researchers from the U S Geological Survey
Speaker 1: said activity from Kilauea's fission number eight, the largest and
Speaker 1: most active, has decreased to only a glow. It's not
Speaker 1: just the lava that makes volcanoes dangerous, though, volcanoes shoot
Speaker 1: vast amounts of ash into the sky that can contribute
Speaker 1: to a lot of rain and flooding. Oregon State University's
Speaker 1: Volcano World website explains that the ash thrown into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere can attract and collect water droplets, creating more rain
Speaker 1: and lightning in the immediate area. When a tropical cyclone
Speaker 1: or hurricane heavy with rain and strong winds is added
Speaker 1: to that already volatile volcanic weather mix, things can become
Speaker 1: even dicier. Bussenger said, its circulation is more vigorous. People
Speaker 1: can be killed by the heavy winds that result or
Speaker 1: the lightning that results. Bussenger has a PhD in atmospheric
Speaker 1: sciences and has been tracking storms, including ones that interact
Speaker 1: with volcanoes, at the University of Hawaii for some five years.
Speaker 1: Here's a historical example. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew
Speaker 1: its top the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: when Typhoon Unia brought heavy rains just as the volcano
Speaker 1: was erupting. The volcanic ashen rock that Pinatubo coughed up
Speaker 1: was washed down the volcano slopes and flows known as
Speaker 1: lahars over the next four years. Those lahars, originally prompted
Speaker 1: by Yunia and later egged on by other storms and
Speaker 1: rainy seasons, eventually caused more damage than the eruption itself.
Speaker 1: After observing tropical storm Flossy roll over Kilauea, in Bussenger
Speaker 1: and colleague Andre patent Hius measured something else, a marked
Speaker 1: increase in lightning. They explained it in a paper in
Speaker 1: the journal Geophysical Research Letters in quote, in the clean atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you have large droplets form around few particles, and those
Speaker 1: large droplets tend to fall out before these large droplets
Speaker 1: have a chance to get up into the upper atmosphere
Speaker 1: where freezing takes place. It's freezing that's required for electrification.
Speaker 1: When you have pollution from a volcano that's producing lots
Speaker 1: of condensation particles, a cloud condensation nuclei we call it,
Speaker 1: then you get many droplets. Those smaller droplets don't rain out,
Speaker 1: and they're more easily lofted above the freezing level, and
Speaker 1: then you do get charge separation electrification. By early August,
Speaker 1: just before Hurricane Hector swung near the southern side of
Speaker 1: the Big Island, seven tropical cyclones had already made landfall
Speaker 1: across the Hawaiian Islands since Kilauea began as the latest
Speaker 1: run of eruptions, the three most recent according to the
Speaker 1: Weather Channel, where Flossy in, Hurricane Zel and Hurricane Darby in.
Speaker 1: With Kilauea showing few signs of abating, Hawaii may be
Speaker 1: facing several more chances at hurricane versus volcano meetings. But
Speaker 1: even if a tropical storm doesn't directly strike the big island,
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't make landfall and glide over Kilauea,
Speaker 1: even if the rains and lightning are somehow held to
Speaker 1: a minimum, can still stir things up around Hawaii. Some
Speaker 1: of those byproducts, given the alternative, might even be welcome there.
Speaker 1: The heavy moist air of a hurricane can help clean
Speaker 1: the air of the bigger ash particles from a volcanic eruption,
Speaker 1: and a good windy storm is always welcome by some
Speaker 1: types in the islands. Passenger said, it's going to kick
Speaker 1: up some holacious surf. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article Battle Epic When Hurricanes Clash with Volcanoes on how
Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio and partnership with how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.
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