What are the top 5 largest volcanic eruptions?

5 of the Most Explosive Volcanic Eruptions
  • Mount Tambora, Indonesia (1815) — VEI-7.
  • Krakatoa, Indonesia (1883) — VEI-6.
  • Mount Vesuvius, Italy (79 A.D.) — VEI-5.
  • Mount Pinatubo, Philippines (1991) — VEI-6.
  • Yellowstone, U.S. (640,000-plus years ago) — VEI-8.




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Mauna Loa, which means long mountain in Hawaiian, is the largest active volcano in the world. It covers 2,035 sq miles (5,271 sq km), and is one of a chain of five volcanoes which form Hawaii's Big Island. This one volcano alone comprises half of the whole island.

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Nestled in the San Juan Mountains, there is ample evidence of one of the largest known volcanic eruptions on the planet: a caldera 22 miles wide and 62 miles long. It's called the La Garita Caldera, and it rivals the Toba eruption in Indonesia and all Yellowstone eruptions.

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The Yellowstone supervolcano last erupted about 640,000 years ago. A sleeping giant is nestled in the western part of the United States. Though it stirs occasionally, it has not risen from slumber in nearly 70,000 years.

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The Yellowstone Caldera in north-western Wyoming is one of the largest volcanoes in the world. In the past 2.1 million years, it has seen three catastrophic eruptions that blanketed North America in ash and a number of smaller eruptions where lava flowed within the caldera, most recently 70,000 years ago.

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Three of the seven supervolcanoes in the world are in the U.S.:
  • California: Long Valley Caldera.
  • New Mexico: Valles Caldera.
  • Wyoming: Yellowstone.


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