Tonga volcano caused your GPS system to wobble and other science stories

it is not just solar flares that can knock out satellites etc.

 Science alert story about the eruption of the Tonga volcano in Jan 2022.

The volcanic eruption in Tonga in January 2022 was so large, it created waves in the upper atmosphere that constituted their own form of space weather. It was one of the largest explosions in modern history and impacted GPS across Australia and Southeast Asia. As we describe in our new study in the journal Space Weather, the eruption caused a super "plasma bubble" over northern Australia that lasted for hours.

the article has the technical details of superbubbles, that compare this to the designs you see when you add cold cream to your coffe.

More in this video...

No reports if the huge explosion would affect the weather (Mt Pinatubo lowered the world temperature for a year or two if I remember correctly).

Luckily the eruption only killed three people according to this report.

But there is another volcano that might cause a major disaster:...The UKGuardian has lots of photos:
...a lot depends if it just has local lava flows, or local pyroclastic flows... and of course, the dust and sulfur can cause asthma and the dust when it rains can collapse houses.

Sigh.

the problem about evacuation is that, if they evacuate and nothing happens, then the next warning will mean people will ignore the warning and stay put. Often most of the family will leave but leave one person to guard their possessions against looting, and of course the dust can kill farm animals and crops.

In the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, we are watching the typhoon that just devestated Guam that might be heading our way.

It is; very large which means the areas affected by wind and rain are larger. 

UPI says it could affect not just the Philippines but Taiwan, China, and Japan.

And it is traveling slowly, which means that the rains will last longer than if it travels quickly, and of course flooding is a major problem. It will probably only hit north of here but we are downstream from the mountains of northern Luzon so floods are a worry.

right now, we are having heavy thunderstorms every evening (the yearly monsoon rains) which is good because it means less of a need to pay for irrigation pumps to flood the fields to prepare them for rice.

But it also means the soil is saturated, so even if we only are hit by the edge of this typhoon, flooding as water runs downstream from the nothern mountains added to the monsoon rains, is a bigger danger.