Photos

The beach of Union Island, one of the Grenadines of St. Vincent, inhabited by only a few hundred people.

The beach of Bequia, one of the larger islands of the Grenadines of St. Vincent. The object at the lower right is space junk, a piece of a European rocket booster that washed up on the beach.

A view of the jungle on St. Vincent, taken from the beach. The rocks in the foreground are the remains of lava flows from a 1979 eruption of La Soufriere volcano.

At 8:41 a.m. local time on 9 April 2021, La Soufrière volcano, a 1,234 m peak on the island of Saint Vincent, erupted explosively. Some two hours later at about 10:30 a.m., Landsat 8 acquired this image of volcanic ash billowing from the mountain; the plume obscures the volcano on the northern side of the island. The eruption - the volcano’s first explosive event since 1979 - prompted thousands of people to evacuate. The eruptions propelled ash and gas high into the atmosphere not only over Saint Vincent, but also over Barbados, 190 km (120 mi) away. Photo courtesy of NASA.

Beginning on 9 April 2021, eruptions at La Soufrière volcano on the island of Saint Vincent propelled ash and gas high into the air over the Caribbean islands of Saint Vincent and Barbados. Winds carried much of the ash and gas east from Saint Vincent. On the afternoon of 10 April, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image showing ash reaching Barbados, 190 km (120 mi) away. Clouds (white) are also abundant in this view. Photo courtesy of NASA.