It’s 11 AM as I write this post. But I’m not in class. In fact, I’m not even at school. I’m home! I’m not sick, and we obviously didn’t get a snow day. I mean, it’s the tropics. So what could have happened that would keep me cooped up at home on a school day?
IT’S AN ASH DAY!
That’s right. Sometime during the night, a small volcano 120 miles away erupted, sending plumes of ash and rock miles and miles into the air. And today it is all landing right here in my town. I woke up to an ashy gray wonderland. Although wonderland is most definitely an exaggeration.
It was raining ash for the first four hours after I woke up this morning. I think it has let up a bit now, but for awhile, it literally looked like snow falling gently through the air. I keep joking that it looks like a Louisiana blizzard out there… The ash is so fine, it doesn’t cover the ground much. But if it was snow in the deep south, I’m sure they’d cancel school.
And we did too.
One of the biggest dangers of ash (besides, you know, the erupting volcano from whence it came) is that it can do bad, bad things to your health if you inhale too much of it. When ash mixes with water, it basically turns into cement. So you can imagine what it would do your delicate respiratory system… Because of the amount of ash in the air and on the ground, the administration felt it best to ask families to stay safe inside today.
Naturally, that didn’t stop me from strapping on a mask (thank goodness I saved mine from when Merapi erupted in 2010) and walking around campus for awhile to take some pictures. I wanted to go out and see how the streets were looking, but after being outdoors for just 30 minutes, my eyes were burning pretty bad, my hair was feeling rather gritty, and I was starting to cough, so I thought it best to hunker down inside with the doors and windows closed for awhile.
You can’t see the ash rain clearly in any of the photos because it is so fine. But it kept getting all over my lens, which made it difficult to take quality pictures. Or at least, that’s my excuse. But here is an idea of what I woke up to today. A very gray world.
Did you notice how cloudy it is in all of the pictures above? Yeahhhhh… About that… It wasn’t cloudy this morning. But the sun WAS obscured – by all the ash in the air!
Time to clean my camera now…
OH! And in case you forgot (like I almost did), today is Valentine’s Day!!
So Happy Valentine’s Day! I got you this flower.
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