Out on the Alaskan island of Unalaska sits Makushin. This volcano is covered in a thick layer of ice and snow. And although it is not far — as the crow flies — from Dutch Harbor, it is extremely inaccessible. Yet, as part of its tasked mission, the Alaska Volcano Observatory must watch for signs that this volcano might be rumbling back to life.
Makushin is a volcano with a busy and sometimes violent history. The last known eruption from the caldera volcano was back in 1995; over the past few centuries, Makushin has produced at least a dozen blasts. Some of these eruptions were as large as VEI 3 (something close to the same size as the 2010 eruptions at Mount Merapi in Indonesia).
