There has been a massive eruption on the island of St. Vincent of the Soufriere Volcano, visible from space from the GOES East satellite …
Here is an animation starting at 6:50am with frames every 10 minutes, through 9:30am …
Evacuations were underway at the time of the eruption. The La Soufrière is rather notorious, having had multiple severe eruptions over the last 300 years.
A weak but strengthening disturbance has been doing a slow loop just south of eastern islands of Indonesia and East Timor. It has dumped epic amounts of rain over the region, causing tremendous flooding. Thirty thousand have been evacuated, and while 97 deaths have been reported as of this morning that number will undoubtedly be higher as several flash floods hit at night. In the words of one official:
Most of this damage happened before the cyclone became organized enough to become a named storm. Now known as Seroja, the cyclone (in the Southern Hemisphere hurricanes are called cyclones) the system is moving away from the islands and headed towards the west coast of Australia, where it may be nearly category 3 (major hurricane) in strength when it makes landfall.
