On March 23, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of ashfall on the snow around Shiveluch—one of the largest and most active volcanoes on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Ash from volcanic eruptions can be swept in a narrow direction by the wind. When the wind changes direction so, too, does the location of the ashfall.
A subsequent image, acquired on March 26, 2015, by NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows winds shifting again, this time carrying the ash toward the south and southeast.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.
