Word: paricutin
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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...greatest show on earth" (according to informed critics who have seen it) is now in the 20th month of an amazing run. Scene of the show is a Mexican plateau near the Pacific, 200 miles west of Mexico City. Paricutin, the new volcano which erupted from a cornfield, has grown to a mountain some 1,500 feet high and shows no signs of weakening. Natives call it El Monstruo. Belching 2,700 tons of fiery rock a minute, the crater has over-awed hundreds of tourists. At its more spectacular moments, spectators break into applause. One woman, after watching...
...extraordinary impression Paricutin has made on scientists springs from its long, brilliant run and the fact that it is the first volcano they have been able to watch from birth. Last week, fresh from an expedition to it, Geologist Paul O. McGrew of the Chicago Natural History Museum made a scientific report on Paricutin. Said he, among other things: "This tremendous display was beyond all description. ... On leaving this monster I felt as though I were leaving a World Series baseball game in the sixth inning with the score tied...
...Dionisio Pulido, plowing his cornfield, suddenly felt the ground rumble and saw a great column of white smoke burst from the ground. He ran to the priest in the village of Paricutin, two miles away. By the time priest and villagers arrived, the crater was belching molten rock and lava. In a week it had raised a cone 500 feet high; in ten weeks, 1,000 feet. Then lava, erupting from the crater's top and sides, began to ooze over the countryside...
...black, craggy pile, the moving lava constantly cracks chunks off its crust, exposing a gooey, glowing mass underneath (temperature: 1,994° F.). Its approach sets houses afire. Traveling about seven yards an hour, the glacier-like ooze has already spread more than seven miles and engulfed two villages-Paricutin and Parangaricutiro...
Volcanologists feel sure that when Paricutin burns itself out, as it eventually must, it will stay dead, like other old volcanoes in the vicinity. Then the cooling, mineral-laden lava will become extraordinarily fertile...