The eruption desk · USGS and the Smithsonian, read live
Which volcanoes are restless.
Right now.
Every volcano in the United States and its territories that the Geological Survey currently holds above NORMAL — its aviation colour code, its alert level, when the observatory last spoke, and what it said, in the observatory’s own words. The list is the survey’s Hazard Notification System, the same feed its own site runs on, fetched by this page directly and read again every five minutes while you watch.
For the rest of the planet, the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program’s Weekly Volcanic Activity Report, printed as issued. No key, no account. On a quiet day the board says nothing is elevated; it does not pad itself with dormant peaks.
every US volcano above normal · the observatory’s own words · the Program’s weekly report · read every 5 minutes · drawn by this page’s own hand
The board
Above normal. All of them.
One card per elevated volcano — the colour code on a pill that wears the survey’s word, the alert level, the observatory, the summit height and position from the vendored lookup, how long since the notice went out, and the notice’s own summary for that volcano. Red and orange first. The board refreshes itself while you watch, says when it last read the survey, and a press of the button reads it again on the spot.
The board
waiting for the survey
Not read yet.
The map
Rings on a drawn coastline.
The board at once — one ring per elevated volcano, placed by the notice’s own coordinates or the vendored lookup’s, sized and inked by code, pulsing while the notice is fresh. The faint dots are every US volcano the survey lists; the hollow diamonds are the week’s reports from the Global Volcanism Program, placed by the report’s own point. The coastline is traced from Natural Earth’s public-domain outline; no tiles, no library, just the canvas. Click a mark and the desk names it.
The map
elevated, inked by codea US volcano in the lookupin this week’s GVP report
Click a ring or a diamond to name what is under it.
The week
The rest of the planet, weekly.
The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program and the USGS Volcano Hazards Program publish a joint Weekly Volcanic Activity Report every Thursday: new activity and ongoing activity, volcano by volcano, with the sources each entry rests on. This desk prints it as issued — the Program’s words, not a paraphrase — and marks each entry on the map above by the point the report itself carries.
The weekly report
Reading the report…
Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report — © Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program, reproduced from its public RSS feed with the Program’s wording unchanged. The Program describes these notices as preliminary and subject to change; the reviewed reports are its Weekly Report page and the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network.
Not read yet.
About
A desk, not an observatory.
The board is the USGS Hazard Notification System’s elevated-volcano list, read from volcanoes.usgs.gov without a key. It names every volcano an American observatory — Alaska, Cascades, California, Hawaiian, Yellowstone, and the Northern Mariana Islands — currently holds above NORMAL on the ground or GREEN in the air, and the notice each row rests on. The desk reads that notice too and prints the section written for that volcano: the observatory’s synopsis and its summary, as text, with a link to the notice as issued. A separate read of the survey’s monitored-volcano list supplies one figure only: how many volcanoes it monitors, so a quiet board can say so against a real number.
The elevated list carries no coordinates. The desk places a volcano by the notice’s own latitude and longitude when the notice has one, and otherwise by a lookup vendored into the page from the survey’s own US volcano list — the source and fetch date are printed under the board. A volcano in neither is listed with its card and left off the map, and the card says so. The colour codes and alert levels are USGS’s own scale; the hues on the pills are this site’s legible stand-ins for the survey’s pure yellow and orange, and the word on the pill is the code.
The weekly report comes from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program’s RSS feed through a relay on this origin, because volcano.si.edu sends no cross-origin header; the relay names that one file, caches it for thirty minutes, and passes it through unchanged. Times are shown as “how long ago” against your own clock — hover a stamp for the full local time. The coastline is Natural Earth’s public-domain 1:110m outline, carried in the page; it is scenery, not authority. What the survey and the Program do not say, the desk does not invent.