When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the Pacific Ocean erupted earlier this year, the event was one for the record books — in several surprising ways.
The January 15 eruption was so explosive that it injected water vapor so high that it touched space, a first-of-its-kind observation for an earthly volcano. And the event produced the greatest concentration of lightning ever detected — making it far flashier than the 2018 eruption of Krakatau in Indonesia or the 2021 tornado outbreak across the U.S. South.
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The eruption
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