Holey moley, what the hell happened to those trees?
Start out with what seems like a peaceful rolling cloud of dust, and then something starts snapping trees in half and devouring them. I’d assume a yeti was down there trashing the place before thinking it was hot gas and sliding debris doing it.
All I could think was run motherfucker, run!
I KNOW! My favorite part is where the birds stop singing and you’re like, “Awww shit. This just got real.”
Remember the Kraffts!
What’s surprising is how quiet it all seems. Besides the occasional sound of falling trees there’s not much to hear- no rush of wind (unless you’re in it I guess), no tumbling of rocks that I can hear, no cries of alarm from the birds. Yes, some of the birds do go quiet, but there’ still a number in the background that don’t seem to notice anything going on.
I guess this is where you really have to keep your eyes peeled, otherwise a flow like this can really sneak up and surprise you. If it’s caused by the collapse of a lava dome, you might not even hear the initial cause of the flow.
I love how idiot kids are out flying aerial drones around for kicks, but dedicated research teams haven’t picked up on them for use in observing dangerous natural phenonena without risking human life yet.
That is an excellent point.
Well it’s not like they can predict down to the minute when a dome is going to collapse. If you’re tromping around out in the jungle to look at some rocks or repair a sensor or whatever, you’re probably not going to tote along a heavy and cumbersome quadcopter just in case a pyroclastic flow decides to show up.
Cumbersome I’ll grant you, but heavy? They fly - they are lightweight by design.
But more importantly, why would you tote around something that can fly? 
Granted, they do have limited flight times, but you don’t need “down to the minute” predictions. Carry one with you on your hike, at most around 10 extra pounds for a rather large and heavy drone. When something interesting seems like it might happen, take a minute or two to launch the drone.
Even with zero warning, you can still get it set up quite rapidly, and unless it’s a very short lived event, the lost time is easily compensated for by 1) being able to achieve aerial shots and 2) keeping human lives out of the reach of deadly things like expanding clouds of pyroclasm.
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