Krakatoa was an island the size of Manhattan in the Pacific. On a Monday morning that must have seemed like any other, a series of powerful volcano eruptions occurred in 1883. It blew so much tephra (magna, rock and ash) into the air that it looked like a nuclear bomb had exploded. It had the force of 150 megatons of TNT. The airwave traveling at the speed of sound, traveled all around the world, bouncing back and forth seven times. The audible sounds traveled further than any sound in recorded history.
The magna, ash, and rock reached up 4 miles and then plummeted down into the ocean causing a tsunami 130 feet high. The wave hit Java and Sumatra, taking whole villages and killing over 40,000 people.
The residue of sulfuric-acid stayed in the stratosphere for several years causing what was called "Bishop's Rings" around the sun with brilliant red color.
An officer on an American ship recorded in his logbook that "a heavy black cloud was rising up from Krakatau Island...with the wind increasing to a hurricane, gradually it grew dark until it was midnight at noon, with a heavy shower of ash that grew so thick it was difficult to breathe and it had a strong smell of sulfur...all expecting that the last days of the earth had come!"
Storms come upon us all. Some come suddenly without warning as it did in Japan and sometimes it comes with warning like our friends on the East Coast. Hopefully, one has time to prepare but often there is no time. When such tragedy is felt it is as if it is midnight at noon for a very long time.
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