The ash cloud that the Cumbre Vieja volcano has thrown last morning has significantly covered the municipalities of the northwestern region of La Palma and has reached the telescopes of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), located in the Observatory del Roque de los Muchachos, at an altitude of 2,426 meters.
Although on other occasions the ash had been displaced to this area by the wind, this time it completely covers the entire orography of that area in the north of the island of La Palma.
With the first daylight they can be seen through the images offered by the webcams installed in the astrophysical complex, how the ash covers the domes and the rest of the facilities.
In the municipalities of Tijarafe, Puntagorda and Garafía, the ash completely covers the landscape as well as houses and roads. “It is a very fine ash that had never reached here in such a copious way before,” the owner of a bar in Tijarafe, a municipality closest to the Aridane Valley, explains to EFE.
But the amount of ash is also important much further north, in Garafía, where neighborhoods like Cueva de Agua or Santo Domingo, on the north coast, have been covered in black.
In Puntagorda, a neighbor has told EFE that “the air quality does not seem entirely good, there is a strange smell and the town woke up with a thick layer of smoke, it is necessary to wear a mask at least at this time,” he said.
In this sense, according to the website of the Cabildo de La Palma in which the air quality index data of the different stations distributed throughout the island geography is offered, the Puntagorda station has measured 53.11 ug / m3 of matter PM-10 particulate matter measured at eight in the morning this Sunday.
This measure is far from the 20 ug / m3 that this parameter of suspended particles considers as good.
According to the Pevolca, volcanic ash is any fine-grained material that is less than 2 millimeters in diameter. Volcanic ash is rock that has been blown up and shattered by steam inside the volcano.
Thus, the wind is an important factor that disperses the ash according to its direction and speed.
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