Whakaari/White Island Activity Could Continue for Several Weeks

Earth Sciences New Zealand Experts said monitoring fo the volcano could be hindered by bad weather over the coming days, but the risk to the mainland is very low.

The eruption yesterday afternoon saw a grey plume of ash reach 1300 meteres into the air and lasted for around two minutes. 

Volcanic Duty Officer Steven Sherburn said the eruptions could be connected to a periods of minor unrest in the past few weeks. 

"They're basically related. For the last several weeks we've been in this situation where mostly we've just got steam quietly coming out and then occasionally we're getting, these smaller eruptions. "

"So it's all part of this period, this phase that the volcano is going through," he said. 

Unlike previous eruptions, a gas measuring flight will not be happening, and bad weather could hindercamera footage of the island. 

"So it's going to be quite difficult for us to see what's going on at the island over the next few days and not possible for us to make any particular observations because of the weather."

Metservice has informed Earth Sciences their satellite will not get views "of the island probably before Saturday at the earliest."

Despite this, the public should not be concerned about ongoing activity he said. 

"The likelihood of it impacting people living around the coast is pretty slim."

"The worst thing that could possibly occur would be a small amount of ash falling, but that's really very, very rare."

"We haven't seen it for a long time," he said. 

Although the eruption cooincided with an Earthquake in Tonga last night, it was a coincident. 

"There are special circumstances where large earthquakes can trigger eruptions, but this is the other way around, so that can't have happened."

"We don't know of any examples of small eruptions triggering moderate-sized earthquakes a thousand kilometres away."

"Occasionally a Whakaari eruption, and an earthquake in the Tongan region will just happen to occur close together," he said. 

Over the next few days, if the Island is visible from the mainland, there may still be steam coming from the crater. 

"They shouldn't be surprised to mostly see just steam coming out, the white plume that we normally see and occasionally we may see something which is darker and contains some ash."

This pattern may continue for a few weeks.