O.T.: Virtual Volcano Chasing, Lightning Pics

Every once in a while, we bloggers here at AccuWeather get lucky "virtual storm chasing" on the Internet. By watching webcams and weather stations, you can sometimes get a pretty good feel for what a storm is doing as it moves by.

Last week, that happened to our own International Meteorologist Jim Andrews with the recent explosion of the Chaiten Volcano in Chile, which caused the evacuation, and later flooding (via lahar*) of a town (oddly enough) called Chaiten. Above are the last two images that the camera took, compared to a "normal" image. Jim has much more information and a larger version of the webcam captures on his blog (PREMIUM | PRO). You can see a close-up picture of the lahar* overtaking the town below.

*A Lahar [WikiPedia] is a mud flow from a volcano which generally moves down a river bed. It's unclear at this time whether or not this was really a Lahar, or just ash-laden river overflowing its banks due to heavy rain. See Jim's blog for more info.

VOLCANO LIGHTNING PHOTOS

Now, a number of you have forwarded me some photos supposedly showing crazy lightning coming out of the volcanic ash(because this is a commercial blog, I am unable to show the photos here). As you know, I have busted photography myths before (see my "Media / Internet Accuracy category at the bottom of this entry), and there are a lot of "fake" (or at least mislabeled) photos going around on the Net.

First of all, the photos were displayed on the U.K. Sun website, which looks a bit like the National Enquirer here in the U.S., so the source made me initially suspicious, as did the photos themselves, because the lightning didn't look like meteorological lightning photos I have seen. But the photos as displayed on the Yahoo News site are credited to a particular photographer (Carlos Gutierrez/Reuters), and that makes me 90% sure the photos are legitimate. (It wouldn't be the first time Reuters faked photos). National Geographic has the best, highest resolution version of any of the photos that I could find, and apparently endorses it (they also link to an article explaining why lightning is associated with volcanoes).

In the end, this was the first set of photos of volcanic lightning that I've ever seen, so what do I know? Googling similar photos showed a similar strange look to the lightning when compared to weather-related strikes, so in the end, I think I am 95% sure these photos are authentic.