I have put on my sample blog.

What is the deadliest volcanic eruption of all time?

Mt St Helens? NO, that killed 57 people.
Mt Tarawera? NO, that killed 153 people.
It has GOT to be Krakatoa then, right? Nup not even Krakatoa despite the fact it killed thirty six thousand four hundred and seventeen people!

No, the deadliest volcanic eruption of all time was, drum roll please, MOUNT TAMBORA in 1815 it killed 71,000 people and also caused dramatic weather changes.

Mt Tambora is located in the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia (singularly Sumbawa Island). The height of the volcano is now 2851 meters tall compared to approximately 4300 before the eruption. How did this happen you may be asking. The reason for it getting the chop, chop is because (Don’t bother about the drums this time…) the energy in the eruption was around FOUR time that of Krakatoa.

Now you may saying “wow that is AWESOME but what about those weather changes?” and “Did cats fall out of the sky?”, “Was snow made out of frog poop?” Well if you want to know THAT desperately then I will tell you – probably.

The eruption occurred around the same time as four other major eruptions and during the Dalton Minimum (Just in case you wanted to know The Dalton Minimum was a time of very little solar activity). All these together these caused the Year Without A Summer – better known as 1816. Some rather interesting and odd things happened during this time I will rank from 5th most interesting to the 1st…

5. In NE USA where the temperature rarely falls below 5 degrees during Summer FROSTS killed of most crops (Mt Tambora not only got the chop, chop but was also the chopper OF CROPS…).

4. East Canada and New England had SNOWSTORMS! These caused a lot of fatalities.

3. Now, you may have heard of J.M.W. Turner??? He was a very famous painter he was known for the brilliant yellow sunsets he painted. It has been theorised that his paintings where based on the yellow in the sky from the eruption.

2. In China the cold killed Water Buffalo. Look at a photo of them how could snow kill them???

1. The Tambora eruption caused Hungary (the country, stop laughing) to experience brown snow and in Italy RED snow fell throughout the year.

Mt Tambora’s explosion was heard on the island of Sumatra. Why is this amazing???? The island of Sumatra is more than 2000 km away! And for two days the sky was pitch black anywhere within 600 km of the volcano.

Most of the deaths from the eruption were from starvation and disease only about 11 to 12 thousand people were killed directly by the eruption. In case you were wondering there was a Tsunami of about 1-2 metres up to 4 metres. Amazingly eruptions and small earthquakes continued until years later.

FAST FACTS

• The entire Island was destroyed.
• The eruption was dubbed ‘The Pompeii of the East’ because the bodies were preserved the same way they were in the AD 79 eruption of Mt Vesuvius.
• Pumice rafts were found floating around the oceans months later.
• 71,000 people died and hundreds of thousands more died in the odd year of 1816 (see story)
• The sunsets were pretty all over the earth for ages because of the ash in the atmosphere.
• The sounds were heard a long way (2000+ km) away.
• There were Tsunamis and earthquakes. The earthquakes went on for years later.
• The eruption turned snow funny colours.
• The volcano was a very very large one until the eruption when it lost more than 1000 metres off the top.
• People mainly died from starvation and disease.
• I am awesome!!!!