What is the highest height of the lava shooting in the air?

Ms Dvorak's class

Hi Ms Dvorak's class. Do you mean fountains of lava or explosive eruption plumes? If you mean fountains such as occurs at basaltic volcanoes, the highest fountains I know of occurred in Japan on the island of Izu Oshima in 1986. The fountain heights were measured to be around 1500 meters high. That is equivalent to 4920 feet (a mile is 5280 feet). That is pretty incredible. The highest recorded fountains in Hawai'i were more like 600 meters high and this happened in 1960 during the Kilauea Iki eruption.

It is a totally different story concerning explosive eruption plumes such as those generated at volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens or Pinatubo. The highest Mt. St. Helens plume on May 18, 1980 reached about 31 km (101,700 feet), and the highest Pinatubo plume got as far as 45 km (147,600 feet).

Sincerely,

Scott Rowland

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