Week 4 – Jacob Fisher – Mount Pelée

This week I visited Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Mount Pelée [PHOTO: https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=360120]

Mount Pelée is a result of a subduction zone; this subduction formed the Lesser Antilles island arc of volcanoes that stretches between Puerto Rico and Venezuela. This subduction zone is where the Caribbean Plate meets the South American Plate.

Diagram of the geological process of subduction [PHOTO: Subduction-en.svg from Wikimedia Commons by K. D. Schroeder]

Mount Pelée’s most destructive eruption occurred in 1902, which destroyed the city of St. Pierre. It was an explosive eruption on the morning of May 8, witnesses say the upper mountainside ripped open and a black cloud shot out horizontally. The horizontal pyroclastic surge sped along the ground and reached the city within a minute, covering the entire city. It erupted with similar force again of May 20 and again on August 30 although the August eruption was not quite as powerful as the first two. On 16 September 1929, Mount Pelée began erupting again; this eruption formed a second dome in the caldera and again produced pyroclastic flows. This eruption was not as violent as the 1902 eruption. The volcano is currently active with a few volcano tectonic earthquakes occurring on Martinique every year and as such, Mount Pelée is under continuous watch.

References

Global Volcanism Program, 2013. Pelee (360120) in Volcanoes of the World, v. 4.8.7 (12 Mar 2020). Venzke, E (ed.). Smithsonian Institution. Accessed 04 Apr 2020 (https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=360120).