What you can see on the Mount Cleveland cams
Cleveland is watched from Chuginadak, the island it stands on: one view takes in the whole cone from the far end of the island, the other looks up at it from its own flank. Be warned that most of the time you will see cloud: the Aleutians are among the cloudiest places on earth, and a clear frame here is the exception, not the rule. When it does clear, the cone is a near-perfect triangle rising straight out of the sea.
Mount Cleveland and Carlisle across the strait
From the eastern end of Chuginadak Island, about 15 km away, the camera looks west along the island to Mount Cleveland, the big cone on the left, rising from the sea in a smooth, snow-capped slope. To the right, across a narrow strait, stands the smaller cone of Carlisle, on the next island of the Islands of Four Mountains.
Cleveland is one of the most active volcanoes in the Aleutians, and it is entirely uninhabited, 1,500 km from Anchorage. Weather here is rough and wet: rain drops on the lens and low cloud are normal, and a clear day is worth catching.
Why an empty island is watched so closely
Cleveland erupts in short, sharp explosions that throw ash several kilometres up — often with no warning, because the island has almost no ground instruments and the observatory depends on satellites, distant seismometers and these cameras. That matters because the great-circle air routes between North America and Asia pass overhead, and ash at cruising altitude is a serious hazard to jet engines. The volcano also has the only confirmed volcanic death in Alaska's recorded history: a serviceman stationed on the island during an eruption in 1944.
When to watch Mount Cleveland
The western Aleutians keep Hawaii-Aleutian time, ten hours behind UTC in winter and nine in summer, so daylight there runs through the European night. Summer gives the longest days but not necessarily the clearest ones; the best chance of a clear frame is a cold, settled spell, and it is worth checking more than once.
Around Mount Cleveland
There is nothing around it in the usual sense. The nearest settlement is Nikolski, a village of a few dozen people about 75 kilometres east on Umnak Island. The islands of the Islands of Four Mountains group — Carlisle, Herbert, Kagamil, Uliaga — stand in a tight cluster with Chuginadak, all of them volcanoes.
Visiting Mount Cleveland
In practice, you don't. The island is uninhabited, has no harbour and no airstrip, and reaching it means chartering a boat in good weather from Unalaska or Nikolski. The volcano is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
