Hundreds evacuate as Japan volcano erupts

(AFP) – 5 hours ago

TOKYO — Hundreds of people living near a Japanese volcano that has been spewing columns of smoke and ash thousands of metres into the air were forced to evacuate their homes Monday, a local official said.

More than 600 residents of the town of Takaharu in Miyazaki prefecture, on the eastern outskirts of the erupting Mount Shinmoedake, were sheltering in school gyms and community halls, an official said.

Municipal authorities had issued an evacuation advisory for 1,158 residents in high-risk districts near the 1,421-metre (4,689-foot) volcano earlier Monday.

The mountain in the Kirishima range in southwestern Japan has been belching smoke and ash into the air since late Wednesday, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

The agency has widened the area that it fears could be hit by a torrent of high-temperature gas and ash from two kilometres (1.24 miles) to three kilometres from the peak.

It added that the dome of lava inside the volcano’s crater, which grows as pressure increases from below, was now five times larger than it had been on Friday.

For the complete article, go to:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gX3bk3avuId__3e6Af9y39X2DXGg?docId=CNG.c844ee3821075f96953de8636c1c359a.211

And in Washington:

Swarm of Quakes detected on Mt. St. Helens

by KGW Staff

Posted on January 31, 2011 at 9:10 AM

Updated today at 9:10 AM

Interesting video of what other planets would look like relative to the moon.  Jupiter is kind of scary:

http://bradblogspeed.com/what-would-neptune-look-like-if-it-orbited-ea

fr/spaceweather.com

V-TOPPED LIGHT PILLARS: Light pillars are a common sight around cities in winter. Urban lights bounce off ice crystals in the air, producing tall luminous columns sometimes mistaken for auroras. But the light pillars Mike Hollingshead saw last night near a corn mill in Blair, Nebraska, were decidely uncommon. “They had V-shaped tops,” he explains, “and some of the Vs were nested.” Here is what he saw:

“These light pillars are not just rare, they are exceptional!” declares atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. “Ordinary pillars are produced by plate-shaped ice crystals roughly half way between you and the light source. These are different. Their rarely seen flared tops show that they were made bycolumn-shaped crystals drifting slowly downwards and aligned horizontal by air resistance.” …

First 2011 Crop Circle Reported in Indonesia.

On Sunday, January 23, 2011, a resident named Yudi of the Rejosari village
in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, southeast of Jakarta, reported that at 5 AM he discovered
a crop formation in a rice field below a peak called Mount Suru. Yudi says he was
outside from 3 AM on and all was quiet, while other residents said they
heard what sounded like a helicopter pass over. Also see Disclose.tv

fr/earthfiles.com