Alert level raised for Alaska volcano after explosion detected

Scientists raised the alert level for a remote Aleutian volcano on Monday after an explosion was detected on the mountain and heard by residents of a tiny village some 45 miles (72 km) away, a monitoring website said. Cleveland Volcano, a 5,676-foot (1,730-metre) peak on the uninhabited Chuginadak Island, about 940 miles (1,504 km) southwest of Anchorage, was raised to orange from yellow by the Alaska Volcano Observatory. The observatory said that an explosion was detected on Cleveland by both infrasound and seismic data and heard by residents of Nikolski, a settlement of less than 50 people on Umnak Island about 45 miles (72 km) to the east.

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