Mexican Volcano Lights Up the Night Sky, and Social Media

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/world/mexican-volcano-lights-up-the-night-sky-and-social-media.html

Popocatépetl, the active volcano that rises some 40 miles southeast of the Mexican capital, exploded Monday night, sending a plume of ash and gas more than two miles into the inky sky and raining glowing rocks onto its slopes.

Video released by Mexico’s national disaster prevention agency showed a fiery light at the volcano’s crater at 9:38 p.m. The explosion was quickly enveloped in ash and pulverized rock as burning fragments of the volcano’s dome fell over a radius of a mile and a half.

Popocatépetl, whose name means “smoking mountain” in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, sprang back to life in 1994 after a half-century of quiescence. Since then, the residents of the surrounding towns have grown accustomed to frequent emissions of gas and ash and periodic eruptions.

Historians tell us that Popocatepetl had a dramatic impact on the ancient Aztecs. Giant mud flows produced by massive eruptions covered entire Aztec cities. In fact, some of these mud flows were so large that they buried entire pyramids in super-heated mud.
But we haven’t witnessed anything like that in any of our lifetimes, so it is hard to even imagine devastation of that magnitude.
In addition to Mexico City’s mammoth population, there are millions of others that live in the surrounding region. Overall, there are about 25 million people that live in the immediate vicinity of Popocatepetl. Thankfully, we haven’t seen a major eruption of the volcano in modern times, but at some point that will change.