Our friendly neighborhood volcano, Mt. Redoubt, has continued to put on a spectacular show just across Cook Inlet from Kenai. For the first time since the recent eruptive episode started, there was noticeable ashfall in Anchorage.

We had a few hours of notice, so I put a sheet of notebook paper out and let the ash collect on the paper. In four hours, I collected about a teaspoon of ash on the paper. If you go to the Alaska Volcano Observatory website, they describe the proper procedure for collecting an ash sample, and I did a passable job following their directions.

Here is what I collected:

When I went to scoop the ash into the plastic bag, the air smelled strongly of sulfur. It occurred to me that just a few hours earlier, this ash had been molten rock deep inside a volcano. This ash was essentially the youngest rocks on Earth.

I think most people just take rocks for granted. If we bother to consider the age of a rock, we’re not really able to fully grasp what the age of a rock might be. Even if one has no idea of the age of a rock, the first number that pops into our mind is likely to be in the millions of years.

This volcanic ash was less than three hours old when I scooped it into the bag. And before that, it had been molten rock deep inside a volcano. This ash was ash from Hell… literally!

UPDATE: Here it is, one day later… and as you walk through the stores or around town, you can still smell the sulfur, and people are wearing masks. The snow, which just yesterday was a brilliant white, is now grey, and becoming more grey by the hour as it melts. Footprints in the snow are white inside, surrounded by the dirty grey of the ash.