This Week in Volcano News; Sakurajima Erupts, Mayon Pyroclastic Flows

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]As of May 10th of 2026, there are currently 41  volcanoes which are actively erupting around the planet, a total which is 1 less than were  erupting last week. One of these erupting volcanoes is Indonesia's Dukono volcano, which  tragically caused the first volcanic fatalities of 2026 this week. As, on May 8th, the volcano  produced its largest explosive eruption in more than 400 years, throwing boulders that fell  on and crushed 3 people who had illegally ventured within the volcano's 4 kilometer  exclusion zone in all directions surrounding its summit. Dukono has nonstop erupting since  1933 to some degree, with only two other world volcanoes having maintained longer continuous  eruptions; Santa Maria in Guatemala since 1922, and Yasur in Vanuatu since about the year 1250. And now, here are this week’s top volcano related news stories, excluding  that aforementioned disaster.

[00:01:00]In the Philippines, a major pyroclastic  flow occurred at the Mayon volcano, its largest of the year, which reach more than 5  kilometers from its summit. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, the Kilauea volcano produced another episode of  hours long sustained lava fountaining, with minor amounts of tephra falling, and lava fountains  reaching up to 650 feet or 200 meters height. And, in Japan, a strong vulcanian explosion from the  summit of Sakurajima's southern cone occurred that was its largest in 6 months. Sakurajima, for  reference somewhat commonly produces these types of vulcanian explosions, but during the last  several months it had seemingly been producing a lower than average level of activity. That is  why it was somewhat of a surprise when around 4 pm local time on May 8th, a plug at its southern  summit cleared in a more violent than expected manner. This generated a 15,000 foot high eruption  plume, along with perhaps even some short distant pyroclastic flows that may have traveled up to  300 meters away, although I could not confirm than those pyroclastic density currents even happened.  While spectacular, this eruption ultimately caused no harm because no people or structures were  within its active 2 kilometer exclusion zone.

[00:02:21]More similar magnitude explosions could  occur again in the next few weeks, but it is tough to determine a volcano's activity  based off of only one vulcanian type explosion.

[00:02:33]Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the Mayon  volcano which had been continuously erupting for nearly 5 months produced a strong  eruption on May 2nd. While it was initially claimed that the eruption was triggered by a lava  flow collapse, I personally do not think this is completely correct. Instead, I deem the eruption  to have been caused by and yes I am paraphrasing from this linked scientific paper here, the  failure of a perched accumulation of tephra in a drainage which released successive waves of  pyroclastic flows. You might be wondering why I am pointing to this paper as it discusses Fuego's  2018 eruption, not Mayon. Well, that is because recent imagery has shown that essentially the same  exact thing happened at Mayon, it just so happened that the generated pyroclastic flows did not have  as long of a maximum runout as at Fuego in 2018, and there were no people or structures at the  time within its active 6 kilometer exclusion zone when Mayon erupted. What do I mean by this?  Well, as successive ejections of ash, fragmenting lava flows, and more than 1,000 pyroclastic  flows had occurred in the eruption thus far, it caused large amounts of tephra to pile up and  fill the upper segments of Mayon's Mi-isi gully.

[00:03:53]This build of still hot and cooling material  continued until it reached a point of failure, possibly caused by the recent rapid advance  of a lava flow in that sector, and this caused a landslide to occur. And this landslide then  transitioned into a series of lengthy pyroclastic flows, which scorched an area of 1.86 square  kilometers and reached up to 5,080 meters away from Mayon's summit. Hot air on the newly emplaced  pyroclastic flow deposits and from the pyroclastic flows themselves caused ash to rise into the  atmosphere, and this then rained down on multiple nearby communities. Several additional shorter  length pyroclastic flows have occurred since, but in my opinion it does not appear that  any large scale collapses will occur in the same drainage anytime soon. Simply because  most of what was unstable and could collapse already did collapse in that drainage, on May 2nd. And, on Hawaii's Big Island, the Kilauea volcano produced its 46th episode of sustained lava  fountaining, which lasted for a little over 9 hours on May 5th. This eruption was smaller in  all metrics than an average eruptive episode, but regardless still caused tephra to fall near  the erupting vents, generated up to 650 foot high lava fountains, and added 4.6 million  cubic meters of lava to its caldera floor.

[00:05:21]The only vent which produced sustained  lava fountains was the north vent, which is located far away from structures within  its 2018 summit caldera. Now, the next episode of lava fountaining may begin between May 12th 2026  and May 17th 2026, per the U.S. Geological Survey.

[00:05:41]And now, here is a quick list of all of  the world's volcanoes which are currently erupting. Additionally, here are some volcanoes  showing signs of unrest which are not erupting as of the recording of this video on May 9th of  2026. As a final note, I would like to thank this channel's patrons on Patreon and channel  members on YouTube for supporting my work!