Hundreds of people fled their homes on the slopes of a rumbling Philippine volcano on Friday as authorities warned of rain-driven mudflows from an approaching typhoon that could bury them alive. Around 500 residents of farming villages around Bulusan volcano in Sorsogon province, many of them children and elderly women, boarded army trucks clutching sleeping mats and bags of clothes as Typhoon Noul (local name: Dodong) bore down on the area. Trucks sent by the local government of Irosin town in Sorsogon and by the army and police on Friday started fetching residents living within the 4-km danger zone of Mount Bulusan. "I have no choice but to evacuate. I may not be strong enough to outrun the mud flows," 66-year-old housewife Dolores Guela told Agence France-Presse. Officials said she and her meningitis-stricken nine-year-old granddaughter would be among about 1,000 people taken to temporary shelters to wait out the wrath of Noul, which was forecast to bring heavy rains in the Bicol region from late Friday.

The typhoon was gusting at up to 185 kph (115 mph) and experts warned debris from two recent ash explosions could rumble down the slopes of the 1,559-meter (5,115-foot) volcano. The state weather bureau Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration has placed Sorsogon as well as 10 other areas under Storm Signal No. 1. State vulcanologists subsequently raised Alert level 1 — the lowest in a five-step warning system — on Bulusan. Minor ash explosions alone would not normally prompt an evacuation, but authorities ordered one nonetheless because of the threat of mud flows, or lahar, from the approaching storm. Despite the preventive evacuation, some residents chose to stay because they said they still had to take care of their livestock and secure their belongings and harvested crops before they could eventually evacuate.

Bulusan, on the southeastern tip of the main island of Luzon, is about 400 kilometers (249 miles) south of the capital, Manila. It is among the country's 23 active volcanoes. Noul would be the fourth major storm or typhoon to hit the Philippines this year. The disaster-prone nation is lashed by an average of 20 each year, routinely killing hundreds of people.

Source: Inter Askyon

At least 465 people were evacuated from their houses in Siau Tagulandang Biaro district in North Sulawesi province on Friday following eruption of Karangetang volcano, a senior official at Indonesia's National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said here.

Impact of the active volcano's eruption has flattened several houses in Kora village in the region, BNPB Spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said, adding that in the afternoon the volcano was still erupting lava, rocks and hot materials as far as several kilometers from the crater of the volcano.

"No death toll was recorded from the eruption. 465 people were sheltered in three sites located around 5 kilometers from the crater," Sutopo told Xinhua by phone.

Sutopo said that hot clouds were seen engulfing the eastern and southern side of the volcano slopes.

He added that the displaced people did not bring any of their belongings as they have been getting used to Karangetang's volcanic activities in the last few years.

"Today's eruption was different from the previous ones as the hot cloud emitted from the eruption was the largest one by far, which made people have to evacuate," Sutopo added.

Sutopo said that the regional disaster mitigation agency has provided necessities for the refugees in the camps comprising of respirators, food supplies, cloths, blankets, baby foods and sleeping mats.

He said that the latest eruption did not change the volcano's eruption which initially stated at level III, or stage of alert.

The Philippines is preparing to evacuate residents along its northeastern coast as a typhoon approaches, as well as those near a rumbling volcano that has been spewing steam and ash over a central province, officials said on Friday.

Typhoon Noul was about 480 km (300 miles) northeast of the town of Borongan in Eastern Samar province early on Friday, with wind gusts of up to 185 km per hour (115 mph), and was expected to make landfall as a category four storm at the weekend.

Thousands of passengers have already been stranded in seaports along the central and eastern Philippines after authorities stopped vessels from sailing because of rough seas.

The typhoon, the fourth to hit the Southeast Asian country this year, was expected to bring heavy to intense rainfall when it makes landfall in the northeast, the weather bureau said. It was then expected to weaken as it swung northeast towards the Japanese island of Okinawa by Tuesday.

Officials warned that heavy rain from the typhoon could cause "lahar", or flows of mud and debris, around Mount Bulusan, a volcano that has been spewing ash this week.

Japanese authorities have closed part of a popular hot springs area to the public because of fears a volcano might erupt.

Increased earthquake activity at Mount Hakone prompted the Japanese Meteorological Agency to raise the alert level earlier this week to 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the lowest.

The town of Hakone met on Thursday with tourism industry representatives who are concerned about the possible impact on business.

About 50 people who operate businesses in the restricted area were allowed to make a temporary visit to maintain their facilities and collect necessities, according to Japanese broadcaster TBS. It quoted a cafe owner saying he hopes the situation will be over soon.

The closed area includes Owakudani, a well-visited site where tourists can see steam emerging from vents in a crater from a past eruption. Both a section of a ropeway that passes nearby and trails to Owakudani have been closed.

Hakone, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Tokyo, attracts visitors from both Japan and overseas. Most of Hakone's other sights remain open.

The eruption of Mount Ontake in central Japan last September killed 57 people.

Source: AP

There has been a rise in the number of volcanic earthquakes recorded in Hakone, Japan. The nearby Hakone volcano began belching steaming gas and meteorologists say there is a possible risk of an eruption.

There were two minor quakes registering 2.4 and 2.0 recorded at the Hakone volcano, which is located in the Kanagawa Province and is 80 kilometers southwest of the capital Tokyo. Meanwhile, there were a total of 98 volcanic earthquakes recorded at the popular hot springs resort of Hakone on Tuesday up until 15:00 local time. During the whole of Monday, 34 were logged.

Japan's meteorological agency has issued a warning to limit access to the resort.

"Activity at Hakone... is in a state of uncertainty," the agency said in an advisory, which was reported by AFP. "There is a possibility that a minor eruption may suddenly occur," it said. "Please do not enter dangerous zones."

Despite the warning, the agency still believes the risk of the Hakone volcano erupting is minimal. It is maintaining an alert level at 1 on a scale of 5. Level 1 means "normal."

The Deccan Traps in India - between 17° - 24° North and 73° - 74° East - are a place where you can find layer upon layer of solidified rock. This region is thought to have been the site of extremely powerful volcanic activity in the past, so powerful that it caused mile-deep lava over an area as large as the state of California. Last week (April 30, 2015) geophysicists at UC Berkeley announced their evidence that this vast region is related to the asteroid thought to have slammed into the ocean half a world away. The impact near Chicxulub, Mexico - 66 million years ago - is believed by many researchers to have killed the dinosaurs and ushered in the age of mammals. The Berkeley researchers say the impact probably "rang the Earth like a bell," triggering powerful earthquakes and volcanos around the globe, including those that created the Deccan Traps.

The Berkeley researchers - who published their work online April 30 in the The Geological Society of America Bulletin - cited the "uncomfortably close" coincidence between the Deccan Traps eruptions and the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Team leader Mark Richards of UC Berkeley said in a statement:

If you try to explain why the largest impact we know of in the last billion years happened within 100,000 years of these massive lava flows at Deccan ... the chances of that occurring at random are minuscule.

Richards had proposed in 1989 that plumes of hot rock, called "plume heads," rise through Earth's mantle every 20-30 million years and generate huge lava flows, called flood basalts, like the Deccan Traps. It struck him as more than coincidence that the last four of the six known mass extinctions of life occurred at the same time as one of these massive eruptions.

The Kliuchevskoi, the most powerful existing chain giants in the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka volcano, today launched clouds of gas-steam and ash to a height of seven thousand five hundred meters above the level the sea.

Emissions were captured by the observatory of geophysics and volcanology, a subsidiary of the Academy of Science of Russia in the Far East.

The wind spread the ash cloud at a distance of 40 kilometers to the northeast, toward the Gulf of Ozernovskiy, and does not represent a danger for the populations, the regional Emergency Situations Ministry, in a report televised on federal channels said.

However, civil defense declared code yellow -alert averagely for aviation security and recommended to travelers refrain from organizing tourist expeditions in the area of the volcano, active since 1 January.

Kliuchevskoi ranks as the largest and most powerful active basaltic volcano in Eurasia, with four thousand 850 meters.

Actually it gives its name to a group of giants (Kliuchevskaya) located near the east coast of the peninsula as Ploski Tolbachik, Shiveluch and Kizimen responsible for the intense seismic activity in the region since late 2012.

The Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, is part of the zone of high seismic activity on the planet, the Ring of Fire.

Axial Seamount, an active underwater volcano located about 300 miles off the coast of Oregon and Washington, appears to be erupting - after two scientists had forecast that such an event would take place there in 2015.

Geologists Bill Chadwick of Oregon State University and Scott Nooner of the University of North Carolina Wilmington made their forecast last September during a public lecture and followed it up with blog posts and a reiteration of their forecast just last week at a scientific workshop.

They based their forecast on some of their previous research - funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which showed how the volcano inflates and deflates like a balloon in a repeatable pattern as it responds to magma being fed into the seamount.

Since last Friday, the region has experienced thousands of tiny earthquakes - a sign that magma is moving toward the surface - and the seafloor dropped by 2.4 meters, or nearly eight feet, also a sign of magma being withdrawn from a reservoir beneath the summit. Instrumentation recording the activity is part of the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative. William Wilcock of the University of Washington first observed the earthquakes.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs), in its 1:30 p.m. advisory Friday, disclosed that Bulusan Volcano (12.7667°N, 124.0500°E) situated in Sorsogon Province, produced a steam and ash explosion which lasted for 5 minutes based on seismic records.

The volcanic activity was recorded at 8:09 a.m., although it may not have been observed visually due to thick rain clouds covering the summit.

"At around 10:30 a.m., when the crater became visible, strong to moderate, dirty white steaming was observed, reaching 200 meters high and drifting west-northwest coming from the northwest vent of the volcano," Phivolcs said.

Only five (5) volcanic earthquakes were detected during the past week by the Bulusan seismic network, but after the steam and ash explosion, the network recorded approximately 40 volcanic earthquakes.

Alert Level 0 status currently prevails over Bulusan Volcano, Phivolcs added.

However, local government units and the public are reminded that entry to the 4-kilometer radius Permanent Danger Zone (PDZ) remains strictly prohibited due to the possibility of sudden and hazardous steam-driven or phreatic eruptions.

Civil aviation authorities must also advise pilots to avoid flying close to the volcano's summit as ejecta from any sudden phreatic eruption can be hazardous to aircraft.

The Chilean volcano that erupted spectacularly twice last week is causing more chaos after once again spewing a cloud of ash and gas into the sky

Calbuco began erupting again today, sending a massive plume of smoke into the clear blue sky.

The volcano spewed over 200 million tonnes of ash last week, coating nearby towns, wrecking the local salmon industry, and forcing the cancellation of flights as far as Buenos Aires, some 870 miles away.