One of Russia’s most active volcanoes erupted on the far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula on Tuesday, shooting a vast cloud of ash far into the sky that smothered villages in drifts of volcanic dust and triggered an aviation warning.
The Shiveluch volcano erupted just after midnight and reached a crescendo about six hours later, spewing out an ash cloud over an area of 108,000 square kilometres, according to the Kamchatka branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Geophysical Survey.
Lava flows tumbled from the volcano, melting snow and prompting a warning of mud flows along a nearby highway, while villages were carpeted in a
