Lightning Storm Meets Volcanic Eruption Photos

Outline:
Email forward claims that attached photographs show a lightning storm meeting a large volcanic eruption in Chile.



Brief Analysis:
The photographs are genuine. They depict lightning in a plume of ash from an eruption of Chile’s Chaiten Volcano in May 2008.

Detailed Analysis:
These spectacular photographs depicting lightning intermingled with the towering plume from an erupting volcano circulate via email, blogs and social media. The almost otherworldly sight of these two powerful forces of nature clashing with each other has caused some commentators to suggest that the images have been manipulated. However, the photographs are in fact genuine.

The photographs depict an eruption of the Chaiten volcano in Chile in May 2008. The volcano, which was previously dormant for thousands of years, is located around 1300km south of Santiago. An article about the eruption published on the Mail Online website on May 7th 2008 describes the event:

As clouds of toxic ash and dust tower into the sky, they ionise the air, generating an explosive electrical storm. Colossal forks of lightning spark around the noxious plume as it spews from the volcano’s crater, creating an image of raw, terrifying energy – as if the air itself were ablaze.

Several thousand residents were evacuated from the area and the plume from the eruption left large areas of land covered in a layer of ash.

These images have continued to circulate since they first appeared online in 2008. In June 2011, similar and equally spectacular photographs of lightning in another Chilean volcano ash cloud also began making their way around via websites, social media and news outlets. Chile’s Puyehue volcano began erupting on Saturday, June 4 2011.

Last updated: 15th June 2011
First published: th July 2008
By Brett M. Christensen
About Hoax-Slayer

References
Chaiten Volcano Erupts
Amazing pictures: The lightning storm that engulfed an erupting volcano
Volcanic Lightning
Chile’s staggering volcanic spectacle