So we start this Scary Wednesday theme with a the Lahar. You may have heard of it, and you may think it's pretty scary. But the worst kinds of Lahars are nothing short of avalanches from hell!
A Lahar is like a mudflow, and that's not something you wanna find yourself in the path of. I mean even a normal flood can be pretty horrific when it come crashing down on you, and that is just water.
A mudflow packs a considerably harder punch due to what it consists of, like mud (duh), trees, unlucky bystanders, cars or whatever it swallows down the road. Mudslides crashes bridges my tearing their foundations apart by pure pressure, destroys houses and generally screw up everyone's day.
The bus will probably not arrive today
So a mudflow isn't a picnic, so what if that mudflow consists of pyroclastic material? Yes, pyroclastic, as in volcano! You see, lahars are volcanic mudflows.
They can move up to a 100 kph and it can be more than 1000 degrees C hot and flow more than 300 km. It's made up of molten rock, water, trees, hot ash, boulders 10 meters across and bombs. It actually grows about ten times as it speeds down the mountian and towards your house just with all the debris it picks up.
It's basically incredibly hot cement with the single purpose of killing everything.
This is the time of reckoning
As it hits a river the hot ash heats the water to a steam, which makes the pyroclastic flow move even faster on the superheated steam surface.
So this is one crazy-train from the twilight zone that will incinerate everybone in its path, asphyxiate everybody that dodged it with deadly gasses, crush all the buildings it will ever meet and eventually stop and cover entire cities all with a sort of hard cement that will never be home to life again.
So it's no surprise that Lahars are the most dangerous volcanic hazard there is, more people die of Lahars and Pyroclastic Flows than anything else the volcanoes can throw at you.
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