Alaska Volcano Erupts

A remote but long-restless Alaska volcano rumbled to life on Saturday with three explosions and started emitting a continuous plume of ash, steam and gas in an area important to air traffic, scientists said.

The low-level explosions at Cleveland Volcano, which lies below a major air-traffic route between North America and Asia, were not severe enough to cause a significant threat to planes, said experts.

But the incident did prompt federal aviation authorities to divert some traffic north of the volcano as a precaution, said Rick Wessels, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

“Based on the signals we can see, we think it’s continuously in an eruption right now,” Wessels said of the volcano, located 940 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Cleveland Volcano, which has been restless since mid-2011, is on an uninhabited island in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the world, although major eruptions could cause potential aviation threats.

The 5,676-foot volcano began oozing lava in the summer of 2011, causing lava domes to form at the crater and allowing pressure to build inside the peak. There have since been 20 to 25 explosions at sporadic intervals.

{reuters}