St. Augustine's fire

Early this morning, Mount Augustine, a volcano in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, erupted, sending a plume of ash 30,000 feet into the sky. As of 10 a.m. this morning, winds were blowing the plume north, and it was expected to miss Anchorage and other nearby population centers. Besides a few cancelled flights, human impacts have been negligible thus far, so further eco-drama sounds unlikely, and the webcam view is disappointing. The sensationalist in me is already bored. But c’mon, volcanoes are awesome, they have a huge potential to affect human populations and global climate, and in Mount Augustine’s case, “further eruptions could take place at any time …”