The institute of geo and nuclear science took advantage of a morning clearing for a flyover. "Active steam holes could be seen at a new crater below the higher te-mari crater," volcanologist michael rosenberg later reported on the website. "The seismic activity was low, but that doesn’t say anything about prediction of further eruptions."
During the eruption on tuesday night, heavy rolled chunks with a diameter of up to one meter were thrown into the air. These were old lava chunks that left small craters on impact, rosenberg reported. They flew up to two kilometers. One of them damaged an empty hiking hat. A shower of ash fell in the surrounding area. "The eruption did not release a mud flow," rosenberg said. The ash cloud was 375 square kilometers in size and impeded air traffic. Rosenberg also observed boulders that had loosened above the crater. "This is a sign that the ground shook violently during the eruption."
The tongariro volcanic mountain range has probably been active for 300,000 years, rosenberg told the dpa news agency. At least five craters along a 7.5-kilometer-long north-south/southwest line are historically documented to have erupted. The last time ash and rock were hurled from the te mari crater in the far north was in 1897. Ash is said to have risen from another crater in 1926, but the claims have never been confirmed. Possibly the cloud came from ngauruhoe crater further south. It is also located in the tongariro massif, but is considered a separate volcano because it feeds from a separate magma reservoir. He was active in the 70s.
According to the geo institute, a second volcano has become active 24 hours after tongariro, on white island some 225 kilometers to the north. The volcano lies about 48 kilometers offshore in the sea. "The crater edge camera was splattered with mud and ash this morning, so there’s obviously been a lollipop there as well," craig miller wrote on the institute’s website. "The cloud over the crater lake was darker, possibly because there is more ash in it."