Our magazine and Lake Taupo

I really love our new house. The lounge/living area has one level slightly raised and separate from the main part. This raised level we call the mezzanine and it has become the kids’ play area. Daniel calls it the “magazine”. Today he said, “I like the magazine because I can play with my toys away from Mummy”.

It occurred to me yesterday that I’m wasting valuable worry time thinking about the Auckland volcanic field when I should instead be worrying about Lake Taupo. Many New Zealanders don’t know that Lake Taupo is a giant volcano or caldera. If we look at a map of New Zealand, you get some idea of how huge the volcano actually is. Note the huge blue lake in the middle of the north island in the picture below. Yes people, that is one massive volcano.

Lake Taupo is one of just six “supervolcanoes” on Earth. The other five are Yellowstone, Long Valley and Valles Caldera all in the United States and Lake Toba in Indonesia and Aira Caldera in Japan. Taupo’s biggest eruption was about 26,500 years ago and this eruption remains the largest on Earth in the past 70,000 years. It produced some 530km3 of magma with most of New Zealand covered in ash fall and much of the central north island buried in up to 200m if ignimbrite (gas, pumice and ash). The last eruption at Taupo was about 1800 years ago and although this eruption was smaller than the one of 26,500 years ago, it was still huge on a global scale.

source: http://www.nzgeothermal.org.nz/education/geology.html

Lake Taupo is an active volcano and it is a given that it will erupt again.