Eruption of Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat
December 26, 1997

Around 0700 UTC on December 26, 1997 (Boxing Day in Britain and its territories), the Soufriere Hills volcano on Montserrat produced a large eruption that devastated the southwest sector of the volcano. In addition to the effects on the ground, the eruption produced an ash cloud easily seen in satellite imagery.

 This is a GOES-8 infrared image take at 0845 UTC December 26, or about 1.5-2 hours after the eruption. Notice the white blob over Guadelopue (the butterfly-shaped island in the right center of the image) that extends north-northwest and south-southeast to the adjacent islands (Montserrat and Dominica, respectively). This is the high level ash from the eruption, which is being blown south-southeast by upper level winds (roughly 8-10 miles above the surface). (75K GIF)

 This is a GOES-8 visible image taken at 1145 UTC December 26. Volcanic ash is clearly visible from west of Montserrat across Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia (the two islands south of Dominica) to over and north of Barbados (the island by itself east of the main island chain). This distribution is caused by different wind directions at different heights. The ash west of Montserrat has been blown westward by low level trade winds (from the surface to 1-2 miles up). The ash near Barbados was initially blown south-southeast by upper level winds, then was blown eastward as the wind flow moved through an upper level trough. The rest of the ash plume has been blown south to southwest by winds in the middle levels. (171K GIF)

 This is a GOES-8 visible image take at 1845 UTC December 26. The ash has continued to spread and now extends from south and southeast of Barbados across St. Vincent (the island west of Barbados) to just south of the Virgin Islands. The plume continued to spread across the southeast Caribbean, and some ash was still visible 30 hours after the eruption. (177K GIF)

These images are courtesy of NOAA's Geostationary Satellite Server.

 This is a composite of imagery from two polar orbiting satellites. The upper two panels are from the NOAA-14 satellite, which passed over the ash plume at 1800 UTC December 26. The left panel is an enhanced combination of the visible and two infrared channels which shows the plume better than a plain visible image. The ash plume extends from west of Montserrat across St. Vincent to well southeast and east of Barbados. The right panel is made from taking the difference in the signal received by two infrared channels. This is useful in highlighting the thicker parts of the plume, which are seen over St. Vincent and west-southwest of Montserrat. The lower two panels are from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer on the NASA Earth Probe satellite, which passed over the plume at 1530 UTC December 26. The left panel shows aerosol measurements, whch detect the small rock particles in the plume. The right panel shows measurements of sulphur dioxide (a common volcanic gas) in the plume. (This image courtesy of the NOAA Special Events Imagery site.)(221K GIF)

The Montserrat Volcano Observatory has written a detailed report on this eruption with images. Additionally, Bill Innanen maintains a site with images of Montserrat and the volcano, including the area affected by this eruption.

Sites with archived imagery or movies of the eruption include Michigan Tech University and Dennis Chesters' GOES Hot Stuff.

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