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Paricutín volcano famously was born out of a cornfield in Mexico in 1943 - perhaps the only time humans have ever seen a volcano like this. It lies in a "Monogenetic" field, meaning that volcanoes in this site tend to erupt once and then never again, leaving the landscape with whatever they put out during their eruption. This drone video explores Paricutín and the lava covered landscape surrounding it, including the remnants of two villages that were buried in the lava.
The eruption in this video is animated, but the volcanic landscape around this area is amazing, particularly with the one remaining church steeple. Original caption:
On February 20, 1943, in the village of Parangaricutiro, began to tremble, the earth opened and a steam began to emanate, and the youngest volcano in America was born.
The duration of the activity was 9 years, 11 days and 10 hours. The lava traveled 10 kilometers. There were no human victims. The volcano buried two villages: Paricutín and San Juan Parangaricutiro (Parhikutini and Parangarikutirhu in Purépecha). The first was totally erased from the map and the second town, only part of the church is visible, buried by lava where the tower and the altar stand out.
It is a monogenetic volcano so it has no risk of erupting again but it continues to show activity in the form of steam.
20 de febrero de 1943 nacimiento del Volcán Paricutin, en Michoacán.
20 de febrero de 1943 nacimiento del Volcán Paricutin, en Michoacán.
Explore the landscape around Paricutín, Mexico, where in 1943 this volcano emerged from a farmer’s field, grew into a hill, and sent out lava flows that buried the surrounding town, leaving only the church steeple sticking out of the still-smoldering rocks.
PARICUTIN, el volcán mas joven del mundo. Iglesia San Juan de Parangaricutiro enterrada por las lavas del volcán.
Seventy two years ago today on 20 February 1943, a cornfield in southern Mexico in the town of Paricutin erupted in a spectacular explosion and continued to shoot ash into the air for a year. By the time it was finished, the cornfield had grown a cone of ash over a thousand feet high and covered ten square miles. This explosion of gas, molten lava and solid ash is known as tephra, which is nothing more than the Anglicized version of the Ancient Greek word τεφρα (tephra) which meant ash. This type of eruption is also known as a pyroclast or pyroclastic flow or even pyroclastic density current, which comes from the Ancient Greek words πῦρ (pur), meaning fire, and κλαστός (klastos), meaning broken in pieces.
Image of the Paricutin Volcano during its first period of activity in 1943 courtesy of NOAA via wikipedia, used with permission under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
Imagine if you will, that you are a farmer minding your own business, tending to your fields when all of a sudden an earthquake starts to shake the ground you’re standing on. At first this isn’t a big deal to you as the area you live in is prone to earthquakes, but this is no ordinary quake. You notice a fissure has opened up in your farm field, and is spewing ash and smoke, it also smells of rotten eggs. Within minutes the fissure has transformed into a small mound about two times your height, and within 24 hours it is 50 meters high. Within months it has swallowed your farm field and continues to erupt for 9 years. This is what happened to Dioniso Pulido, a farmer in Mexico on February 20, 1943. This eruption would come to form the volcano we know as Paricutin. Paricutin is often listed as one of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World. The volcano grew to a final height of 424 meters, and it is believed that it will never erupt again, a kind of volcano that scientists call a “monogenetic volcano”. In his own words, Pulido describes the first few moments of this terrifying event: “At 4 p.m., I left my wife to set fire to a pile of branches when I noticed that a crack, which was situated on one of the knolls of my farm, had opened . . . and I saw that it was a kind of fissure that had a depth of only half a meter. I set about to ignite the branches again when I felt a thunder, the trees trembled, and I turned to speak to Paula; and it was then I saw how, in the hole, the ground swelled and raised itself 2 or 2.5 meters high, and a kind of smoke or fine dust -- grey, like ashes -- began to rise up in a portion of the crack that I had not previously seen . . . Immediately more smoke began to rise with a hiss or whistle, loud and continuous; and there was a smell of sulfur.” -NF http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Paricutin.html
