Month: December 2020
Kilauea Erupts! R.I.P. Kilauea Water Lake. Viva the Lava Lake!
Madam Pele awakened rather abruptly on the night of December 20th, 2020, and decided that water lake in her crater just had to go. Volcano goddesses remodel in a spectacular fashion.
Thermal webcam images show Kilauea’s water lake boiled off by the eruption. Credit: USGS
Lakes are temporary features, geologically speaking. Some lakes are more temporary than others. When a lake makes its home in the crater of an active volcano, its life can be very short indeed. And what takes months or years to create can take only hours to destroy.
Resurrecting Pompeii: The Testimony of Skeletons
It’s amazing what bones will tell you if you know what questions to ask. Dr. Estelle Lazer spent years making inquiries of the skeletons of Pompeii, and her Resurrecting Pompeii is filled with their stories.
This is an academic work, written in academic language, so please don’t go into it expecting an easy, breezy read. There isn’t a ton of geology involved, either. You’re going to be encountering more anatomy and pathology than you might have been strictly prepared for. But if you want to see a lot of myths busted, and learn who the people trapped in Pompeii by the eruption were, this book will more than repay all the time you spend googling unfamiliar terms.