When Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai unexpectedly exploded unlike any volcano is decades, the only information we had was from satellites. The tsunami and eruption knocked out most communication between Tonga and the outside world as undersea cables were damaged, airports were covered in ash and infrastructure destroyed. We are now beginning to get a better sense of what happened and how big this blast was.
Images of the volcano after the eruption show that little remains of the main island. Instead, two small promontories stick out of the Pacific. In an image from Planet (above), large biege pumice rafts can be seen -- products of this massive eruption. Other images from UNOSAT using Pléiades images captured the destruction of the tsunami waves that ran up the shore as high as 50 feet (15 meters).
First off, a word of warning: estimating the size and power of volcanic eruptions is tricky. You ...
