When Linda and Philip McNamara went on a boat in Papua New Guinea they had the chance of witnessing an eruption of a volcano. On August 29th, 2014 Mount Tavurvur exploded, shooting debris some thousand feet in the air and creating a sonic boom you could literally see.
The couple from Queensland, Australia captured this natural phenomenon in the beautiful scenery surrounded by ocean. The initial eruption was the start of several subsequent explosions lasting over a few days.
As you can see in the video below, lava is sent hundreds of feet in the air blasting through the clouds. According to the NASA Earth Observatory the plume of ash was towering at 18,000 feet.
Such eruptions have occurred at Mount Tavurvur every few years, but only the last was captured in such an impressive video. Unfortunately volcano eruptions are not only beautiful phenomenon but also quite dangerous.
20 years earlier, in 1994, Mount Tavurvur and Mount Vulcan — a neighboring volcano — erupted at the same time, destroying nearly two thirds of the nearby city of Rabaul.
