This marks a full week of eruption at Chaiten and the volcano shows no signs of abating.
You have to feel for Luis Lara. He is apparently the pointman for the SERNAGEOMIN in regards to this eruption and really, I think its anybody's guess what might happen next. Heck, we haven't seen many eruptions of this scale - and this out-of-the-blue - since the birth of modern volcanology, so we're testing a lot of hypotheses now. What Dr. Lara says is that the eruption is still going strong, lava flows seem to be occurring at/near the vent but not spilling out of the caldera, the two vents have coalesced and the ash column still hasn't started to collapse. Interestingly, rivers coming from the Chaiten area have risen in temperature 7-17 C, which is quite remarkable. My guess (emphasize guess) is that the water from the two (former) lakes in the ...
