Wind is stirring up 1912 volcanic ash over southwest Kodiak Island

People in Karluk and Larsen Bay, particularly anyone with respiratory problems, should limit time outdoors while wind carries volcanic ash over southwest Kodiak Island. The National Weather Service issued the advisory Saturday evening and expects it to hold through midday Sunday.

The ash is 113 years old. Strong northwest winds over Shelikof Strait are picking up deposits left by the 1912 Novarupta-Katmai eruption, the largest anywhere in the world in the last century, and carrying them across the island as haze and a trace of grit. Karluk and Larsen Bay are the communities most likely to see it.

Rain moving over the Alaska Peninsula Sunday afternoon should wet the deposits and settle them. Forecasters expect strong, dry winds to return Monday morning and possibly last into Tuesday, which could lift the ash again.

It happens most years. The eruption buried the region deep enough to create what is now called the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, and dry, gusty stretches still pull ash off those deposits. The U.S. Geological Survey treats resuspended ash as a genuine hazard to health and to aircraft, and has run community air-quality monitoring in Kodiak and Larsen Bay over the same deposits.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which issues Alaska's air quality advisories, had none posted Sunday morning.