© AP Photo/Kyodo News
A dome of lava grows larger inside the crater of Mount Shinmoedake in the Kirishimna range on Japan's southernmost main island of Kyushu Monday, Jan. 31, 2011. Officials urged more than 1,000 residents to seek safer ground on Monday and expanded a no-access zone around the 4,662-foot (1,421-meter) volcano that has exploded back to life. The volcano erupted last week for the first time in 52 years.
A revived volcano in southern Japan erupted Tuesday with its biggest explosion yet, shooting out a huge plume of gas, boulders and ash and breaking windows 5 miles (8 kilometers) away.
The danger zone around Shinmoedake volcano was widened to keep residents safe. The largest eruption since it burst back to life last week covered wide areas in ash, shot boulders onto distant roads, knocked down trees and broke hundreds of windows in hotels and offices.
No serious injuries have been reported since the initial eruption last Wednesday, but public broadcaster NHK said a woman suffered cuts from shattered glass in Tuesday's blast.
NHK said the eruption was five times larger than the initial activity last week, which was Shinmoedake's first major eruption in 52 years.
Japan's Meteorological Agency has restricted access to the mountain, and on Tuesday broadened the no-go zone to anywhere within a 2 1/2-mile (four-kilometer) radius of the crater. Two lodges and scattered homes are within the perimeter.
Dozens of domestic flights in and out of Miyazaki - about 590 miles (950 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo - were grounded last week and more cancellations followed. Train service was temporarily suspended in the area and many schools closed.
The local government also reported damages to crops.
Comment: I've just remembered that a similar event was filmed in Kazakhstan last year:
Note the date: June 30th, the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska cometary explosion over remote Siberia.
Our Connecting the Dots series discussed this other Kazakhstan event last summer.
Now, most Internet buzz seemed to connect this with the UFO that shut down Xiaoshan airport in the Chinese city of Hangzhou on the same night. In fact, the two events were generally confused as being one and the same. Here's a photo of the UFO over Hangzhou:
...but cometary fragments have been reported throughout history of performing 'unnatural' maneuvers themselves, sometimes slowing almost to a halt as they put on their show for us.
You have to wonder about spectacular mass 'UFO sightings' occurring at precisely the same times as these infinitely weirder visions entering or skirting our atmosphere.
Can we say "Cosmic COINTELPRO"?