Ash routinely clouds the Caribbean skies as Soufrière Hills volcano continues its activity. For the past several weeks, the Joint Air Force & Army Weather Information Network has issued multiple ash advisories every day for the West Indies.
This natural-color satellite image shows an ash cloud swirling around Montserrat. The image was acquired on January 31, 2010 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite.
The Montserrat Volcano Observatory attributes ash emissions to the growth of Soufrière Hills’s lava dome accompanied by pyroclastic flows, some of which are reaching the ocean.
NASA image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, based on data from the MODIS Science Team. Caption by Robert Simmon.