The thing about volcanic crises is that nobody really expects them until a mountain starts coughing ash into your morning coffee.
In 2010, when Eyjafjallajökull decided to erupt in Iceland, air traffic controllers across Europe suddenly realized their carefully orchestrated flight patterns meant absolutely nothing to a volcano. More than 100,000 flights were cancelled over six days. Eight million passengers stranded. The ash cloud didn’t care about your connecting flight to Barcelona or your sister’s wedding in Prague. It just drifted where physics told it to drift, and everyone else scrambled to figure out what was actually happening versus what Twitter was inventing.
Here’s the thing: staying informed during a volcano crisis is less about checking your phone every thirty seconds and more about knowing which sources won’t feed you garbage.
Why Your Neighbor’s Facebook Post Is Probably Wrong About Lava Flow Directions
When Mount Agung threatened to blow in Bali during 2017, social media became this weird echo chamber of half-truths and amateur volcanology. People were sharing photos from entirely different eruptions—some from Guatemala, some from the Philippines—claiming they showed current conditions. The actual scientists at Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation were putting out measured, careful updates based on seismic data and gas measurements, but those updates had all the viral potential of a tax code revision.
Turns out the best information during a volcano crisis comes from the least exciting sources. Government geological surveys. University volcano observatories. The USGS Volcano Hazards Program. These organizations have scientists actually monitoring seismographs and gas emissions and ground deformation, not just reposting dramatic photos. When Kilauea erupted in 2018 on Hawaii’s Big Island, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory provided hourly updates on lava flow advancement, air quality measurements, and volcanic gas concentrations. They weren’t trying to go viral. They were trying to keep people from dying.
Wait—maybe that’s the actual test of good information during a crisis: does it tell you what to do, or does it just make you feel something?
The Kilauea eruption destroyed over 700 homes and displaced thousands of residents. The people who followed official evacuation orders—based on lava flow models and seismic activity—got out safely. The people who relied on Facebook rumors or YouTube conspiracy theories about government overreach had a significantly worse time. Some refused to evacuate until lava was literally consuming their property line.
When Scientists Say Maybe and Everyone Wants Definitely
Volcanology is not a precise science, which drives people absolutely insane during a crisis. Scientists can tell you a volcano is showing signs of unrest—increased seismic activity, ground swelling, changes in gas emissions—but they often cannot tell you exactly when it will erupt or how big that eruption will be. This uncertainty makes people anxious, and anxiety makes people vulnerable to anyone offering certainty, even if that certainty is completely fabricated.
In 2021, when La Palma’s Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted in Spain’s Canary Islands, volcanologists could track the lava flows with remarkable precision using satellite data and ground observations. What they couldn’t predict was exactly when the eruption would stop. It lasted 85 days, destroyed more than 3,000 buildings, and covered over 1,200 hectares with lava. Throughout this, scientists gave probabilistic forecasts—this area has a 70% chance of being affected in the next 48 hours—while conspiracy theorists on social media offered absolute predictions that were almost universally wrong.
The uncomfortable truth: during a volcano crisis, comfort certainty is usually fake certainty.
Real volcanic monitoring involves networks of seismometers detecting earthquakes too small for humans to feel. GPS stations measuring ground deformation down to millimeters. Gas sensors analyzing sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide concentrations. Thermal cameras tracking temperature changes. This data gets fed into models that produce probability ranges, not fortune-telling predictions. The scientists at Mexico’s CENAPRED have been monitoring Popocatépetl—one of North America’s most dangerous volcanoes—this way for decades, providing Mexico City’s 22 million residents with the best early warning system available, even though it can’t offer perfect predictions.
And yet people keep asking: but when will it erupt?
The answer is usually some version of “we don’t know exactly, but here’s what we’re seeing and what it might mean.” That’s not satisfying. It’s just honest. During the 2014-2015 eruption crisis at Bárðarbunga in Iceland, scientists were upfront about uncertainty while still providing actionable information about potential hazards. The eruption produced the largest lava flow in Iceland since 1783—covering 85 square kilometers—but because authorities communicated both what they knew and what they didn’t know, no one died.
Maybe that’s the real skill: learning to act on partial information rather than waiting for impossible certainty or, worse, believing someone who’s just making things up with confidence. Official volcano observatories maintain websites with real-time data, hazard maps, and clear explanations of alert levels. They’re not perfect, but they’re approximately right, which beats precisely wrong every single time.
When the next volcano decides to make headlines, your best move is probably the boring one: bookmark your regional geological survey, follow official observatory social media accounts, ignore the viral videos with dramatic music, and remember that uncertainty from experts beats certainity from randm strangers on the internet.
