Posted by: (), Tue Jan 20, 2026 21:18 (2118 UTC)
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AVO Meeting notes for January 20, 2026
Great Sitkin: Orange
Shishaldin: Yellow
Pavlof: Yellow
Ahyi: Yellow
SIC: Matt Haney
Acting CS: Ronni Grapenthin
Duty Scientist: Jordan Lubbers (Matt Loewen until Wednesday)
AVO/CNMI Duty Remote Sensor: Jordan Lubbers (Matt Loewen until Wednesday)
AVO/CNMI Duty Seismologist: Cheryl Searcy
Primary alarms: Cheryl Searcy
Secondary alarms: Jordan Lubbers
AVO radio: Abbie Nastin
DUTY SCIENTIST REPORT– Matt Loewen
+ GREAT SITKIN (Orange/Watch): No major changes. Mostly cloudy all week. Reston report from January 13 confirms lava inflation to the southwest. Light steaming observed in satellite images on January 17. A bit of seismic stuff.
+ PAVLOF (Yellow/Advisory): A burst of LP activity January 14 triggered us to increase the alert level. Activity died down almost immediately afterwards and has been quiet since. Nothing going on at the surface. Returning to Green would seem prudent without any additional signs of unrest. Matt Haney and Kristi Wallace received texts from Hannah in Seattle (FEMA) asking about details on Pavlof.
+ SHISHALDIN (Yellow/Advisory): No major changes. Low-frequency seismic and infrasound activity detected all week when not too windy. Typical steam plume in clear summit views. VIIRS images early in the week and a Sentinel-2 SWIR image Sunday showed slightly elevated surface temperatures deep in the conduit—requires good view angle and bent over steam plume.
+ SPURR (Green/Normal): Some LP activity reported this week, glacial?
+ CLEVELAND (Green/Normal): About 5 earthquakes on January 12 and 13 located about 13 km SE of the summit.
+ AUGUSTINE (Green/Normal): Two shallow earthquakes on January 12 located about 1 km SW of the summit.
+ KATMAI AREA (Green/Normal). Sequence of deep LPs on January 15 and 19.
+ CNMI/AHYI (Yellow/Advisory): One very clear high res satellite image January 17 with no plume. No activity observed at other CNMI volcanoes.
+ Resuspended Ash – Aniakchak: AAWU called Thursday evening that they saw a hint of ash in multispectral satellite images NW of Aniakchak and were issuing a short-lived SIGMET. We put out a corresponding Information Statement.
+ Operational Notes:
• MODIS seems to be gone from VolcView (okay to let it be gone?).
• Boiler plates updated for active volcanoes—does not seem to be a way to add weblinks to the permanent boilerplate.
NET OPS/FIELDWORK: Ellie Boyce
Color Code:
• Great Sitkin – All stations working.
• Shishaldin – All stations working except some SSBA data gaps. There was a brief ~6 hr outage of north Shishaldin sites on 1/18 but it self-resolved and was likely caused by rime ice or snow on the big WTUG hut.
Network, Multi-Station and Array Outages:
• Port Heiden (#aniakchak, #veniaminof (north side) - 2025-12-13 07:07:08 UTC Power outage is ONGOING. – Update received from FAA is that a crew is still trying to get to Port Heiden to make repairs but have not been able to make it yet due to weather.
• Katmai/Peulik - brief outage at AKN receive site on 1/16, caused by power issues. Resolved now except PLK3 which needs troubleshooting. All of Katmai is coming in still!!
• Sand Point (SDPI array) - outage resolved.
• Kenai Infrasound Array – May have finally come back in the past day, hopefully rain has cleared the panels and we are getting some charging. Had been out due to station power issues – Critically low voltage starting ~2025-01-02 21:00 UTC. No field visit planned.
Single Station Issues:
• Wrangell - Tolsona sites (WASW, WACK) continue to have minor data gaps at IRIS. AVO Winston copy complete.
• Spurr - SPCP has been struggling since 1/16 and a few other sites show small data gaps. This is likely due to rime ice on radio antennas.
• Iliamna – ILLG is completely out, ILCB mostly out last week, and ILSW power getting low.
• Hague – D. Fee noted in the SOH channel that HAG low frequency noise worse in the last month.
• Shishaldin – SSBA/AV36 and ISNN/AV38 low power, GNSS powered off at both stations to conserve power for seismic data.
• Westdahl – WECS seismic offline to conserve power for GNSS and radios. WEBT hit LVD.
• Akutan - LVA out due to low voltage. New outages at AKHS and AKMO.
• Okmok – OKAK and OKWE no telemetry.
• Bogoslof – BOGO completely out last week.
• Atka – KOSE/KONE short data gaps last week, presumably rime ice at repeater.
• Adak – Infrasound element 6 is not working and element 2 reported as having reversed polarity.
Overall: please contribute to CoMeet Breakout document here (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z851rIbDNDSUgqYm4xIG0_ipq-6uG5bG/edit)
Tech Team Fieldwork: None
OPEN ANNOUNCEMENTS
+ VISITORS
• Ronnie Grapenthin introduced Karen Williams. Karen is a new graduate student working with Ronnie on the 2020-2021 Shumagin Gap earthquake swarm and post seismic tectonic effects. Welcome Karen.
+ ADGGS – Dain Harmon
• The CNMI logs bug is being worked on.
• Work is ongoing to understand the keyword space for files. Please suggest keywords. Dain has posted the link and instructions in the Townsquare channel of Matermost.
• Abbie Nastin’s last day is January 30.
+ UAF – Ronnie Grapenthin
• David Fee is in DC until Thursday meeting with Representatives.
• Everyone is busy with CoMeet preparations. Thank you to all who have volunteered.
• If you wish to do a lightning talk at the CoMeet please sign up by tomorrow at noon. Karenna has posted a reminder in the Townsquare channel of Mattermost with a link to the Excel spreadsheet.
+ AVO South – Matt Haney
• Tim Orr is at HVO. There have been some earthquake swarms at Kilauea.
• Goals and accomplishments should be entered into the CoMeet Sharepoint files by the end of today.
• The non network field proposals were reviewed last week. Decisions will go out before the CoMeet so they can be discussed.
• Final approval for attending the CoMeet came out last Friday. If you have a change in your travel plans, please let Matt Haney know.
• An updated draft of CoMeet agenda will go out this week.
• There is a USGS special seminar today at 1:00 pm with a discussion of the evaluation of HANS products. Matt Haney will post the link in the Townsuare channel of Mattermost.
• The Spurr OVERT management team will be meeting at 2:00 pm today.
• Ellie Boyce announced that a safety survey was sent out last week. Please fill out if you haven’t already done so.
+ USGS – Matt Haney
• This is a Quicktime week.
• Matt and Michelle Coombs will be giving a series of volcano talks at Romig Middle School on January 30.
• Max Enders has been talking with Taryn Plummer about field work training. The course schedule should be out late this week or next week. We may need to look outside USGS for some training (i.e. wilderness first aid). Please look at your schedule and speak with your supervisor to figure out what training you need.
• Cyrus Read reported that there is a Landslides coordination meeting tomorrow in Glen Olds.
• Hannah Dietterich announced that the Trail Tales folks are looking for someone to tell a volcano field story. The talks are scheduled for March 17 at the Museum. Hannah will be out of the country then so is unable to do one. If you are interested, please contact Hannah
• Dave Schneider will be giving the coffee with a scientist talk at the Tudor Kaladi Brother’s on February 13.
This message is posted in the AVO Logs at https://www.avo.alaska.edu/admin/logs/posts/show/454697