An ash cloud appeared above the volcano, roughly six kilometers high, at daybreak, sending off a huge trail southeast to cross the horizon. Eruptions closely follow one another.
Seismological stations are gauging powerful tremors and surface quakes in the crater vicinity. The wind is carrying the ash cloud toward the Ust-Kamchatsk district center, threatening fallout poisonous to humans and animals.
The northernmost of Kamchatka's active volcanoes, Shiveluch-3,283 meters high-awoke in January this year after many years' lull. The present is its worst eruption since then. The volcano hardly will endanger settlements, though roads are badly threatened, considering many previous occasions on which mud torrents damaged a highway that connects Klyuchi and Ust-Kamchatsk.
