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Photos show a Russian town buried in ash after the Shiveluch volcano erupted, spewing debris miles into the air

Photos show a Russian town buried in ash after the Shiveluch volcano erupted, spewing debris miles into the air

Chris Panella

The ash spewed miles into the air, blanketing a Russian town in debris.INSTITUTE OF VOLCANOLOGY AND SEI via Reuters / Russia's Twitter

The Shiveluch volcano in Russia buried a nearby town in ash, covering houses, cars, and streets.
The volcano, located in the Kamchatka region, spewed debris miles into the air.

This is Shiveluch, a volcano in the eastern Russian peninsula of Kamchatka.

The Shiveluch volcano erupting late last year. Yury Demyanchuk / The Russian Academy of Sciences' Vulcanology Institute

Its current eruption period began in August 1999 and has produced ongoing explosions and emissions, according to the Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian Institution.

It erupted early Tuesday morning, shooting emissions miles into the atmosphere.

Satellite imagery shows Shiveluch beginning to erupt. ROSCOSMOS via Reuters

A video posted on Twitter by Russia shows one perspective of the eruption's enormous volcanic ash clouds, which spread miles into the air and spewed thick debris across the region.

Ash from the eruption covered large areas of land, including nearby villages.

Volcanic ash covering a Russian house and car. Institute Of Volcanology and Sei via Reuters

One video from Reuters showed villagers making "ash angels" and trekking through debris.

Some towns were filled with piles of ash, making driving and traveling difficult.

Volcanic emissions covered streets, pilling up like snow. Head of the Ust-Kamchatsky municipal district Oleg Bondarenko via AP

According to AP, dust clouds spread more than 300 miles north, blanketing whole areas and towns. Over 40,000 square miles of land was hit.

The volcanic ash was inches thick in some areas.

A measuring tape shows how thick the debris settled in some areas. Institute of Volcanology and Sei via AP

The eruption fallout was described by Russian Academy of Sciences Geophysical Survey scientists as the biggest from the volcano in almost 60 years, AP reported.

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