Should the US be worried about volcanoes?

Volcano erupting on Iceland in 2010. Credit: Dagga Billa/Flickr/Creative Commons

If recent media reports are correct, Americans should be increasingly concerned about volcanoes. Earlier this month, two major North American volcanoes suddenly became active resulting in two governments issuing “Yellow Alerts.”

The Mexican government issued a “Yellow Alert” for the country’s Mt. Popocatepetl and the American government issued a similar yellow alert for Alaska’s Great Sitkin.

According to the US Geological Survey, there are six levels of alert for active volcanoes:

Green: Describes volcanoes with minor levels of activity such as steam and small earthquakes, but are not considered a threat to erupt.
Yellow: This designation is for volcanoes that have experienced elevated signs of activity. Explosions have increased from low to moderate. There is a threat of ash falling near the volcano and even the possibility of limited lava flows.
Orange Watch: This indicates there is an increased risk of an explosion. Though the time frame is uncertain.
Orange Warning: At this level a volcanic eruption is imminent or a minor eruption is already underway. This would result in lava flows and ash production but not enough to hinder airplane flights.
Red Watch: Eruption is underway. Lava flows are limited to areas near the volcano and ash would affect air flights.
Red Warning: The volcano is erupting with significant lava flows and levels of ash production that will severely affect air flights.

To provide a base reference, Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea eruption that resulted in the destruction of property (700 homes as of mid-June) has an “Orange Warning” designation.

But there is something concerning about these two “Yellow” alerts because they took place at basically the same time suggesting the increased activity in these two volcanoes thousands of miles apart is somehow linked.

Then at the end of June, Rutger University geologists announced that there is a super volcano forming under Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts. They compared the build up of molten lava deep beneath these three states to the filling up of a hot-air balloon.

In an interview with News.com.au, Geophysicist Vadim Levin said “something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England.”

Though there is no fear of anything happening soon, these scientists were surprised by what they discovered because this is supposed to be a geologically stable area.

Is this increased activity on the US east coast somehow linked to what we see happening on Mt. Popocatepetl and Great Sitkin?

Of course while this is just a super volcano in the making, one already exists underneath Yellowstone Park on the west side of the US. In an article on Charisma News, Michael Snyder points to an interesting development taking place with a geyser known as Steamboat.

Yellowstone Park is famous for it geysers that regularly explode shooting steam and boiling water hundreds of feet into the air. Perhaps the park’s most famous geyser is Old Faithful that explodes every 60 to 110 minutes and shoots boiling water up to 184 feet (56 metres).

However, such is not the case for Steamboat. The last time its stack blew was in September 2014, but it recently became active and has exploded eight times in the last three months. It is uncertain what caused it to come to life.

In the book of Amos, God tells us that He won’t do anything on earth unless first speaking about it to the prophets:

Surely the Lord God does nothing
Unless He reveals His secret counsel
To His servants the prophets.
⁸A lion has roared! Who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7-8 NASV)

So have the prophets warned about the potential of volcanoes?

Actually one has. Speaking of the end times the prophet Joel warned about the catastrophes that would take place on earth before the Day of the Lord:

“I will display wonders in the sky and on the earth,
Blood, fire and columns of smoke.
³¹“The sun will be turned into darkness
And the moon into blood
Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. (Joel 2:1, 30-31 NASV)

The Day of the Lord refers to Christ’s second coming. And in the run up to Christ’s return, Joel saw columns of smoke. Tall columns of ash going thousands of feet into the air are the classic images we have of volcanoes.

And the plural tells us that there would be several eruptions.

We also see a second indicator of how insignificant the volcanic eruptions would be because Joel saw the sun turning dark. When Washington State’s Mt Helen erupted in 1980 the column of ash it produced went 80,000 feet into the air. Though I lived a thousand miles away, we all noticed a haze in the sky over our city because of the eruption.

However, Joel says the sun will turn dark because of the ash suggesting larger eruptions than Mt Helen which resulted in 57 deaths.

Joel also saw blood (death) in his vision and because he put it first before the fire, this indicates it will be significant.

And perhaps it is just a coincidence, but Joel also saw a blood moon and there is a blood moon scheduled for the eastern Hemisphere on July 27th this year. According to the British newspaper The Independent:

“A blood moon is the definition used when the moon appears bright, large and reddish in colour, and it only occurs when there is a full moon.
The blood moon is the result of a total lunar eclipse, which is when the moon passes directly behind earth and into its shadow.”

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