Giant volcano erupts for the first time in 115 years!

Ash cloud over New Zealand.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (PNN) - August 7, 2012 - An eruption of one of New Zealand’s biggest volcanoes has seen flights canceled and roads closed, with a giant ash cloud billowing into the sky above the Pacific nation.

Mount Tongariro exploded into life at around 11.50 pm local time yesterday - the first eruption by this rock behemoth in 115 years.

Although the incident was ranked as a hydrothermal eruption - meaning that it was fueled by trapped steam rather than magma - it was sufficiently powerful to send an ash cloud five miles into the atmosphere.

Air space in an eight-mile radius around the volcano was immediately closed. The national airline Air New Zealand was forced to cancel flights to towns on the country’s North Island - including Gisborne, Rotorua, Taupo, Palmerston North and Napier.

Services to the larger cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were also affected.

The ash cloud subsequently drifted east over the Pacific Ocean - and air services have resumed.

However, the New Zealand government has warned that even though the volcano had sat dormant for over a century ahead of yesterday’s eruption, further activity is possible.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more small-scale eruptions,’ said Brad Scott, a vulcanologist who works for the government agency GNS Science.

The agency had been aware of increased seismic activity at the volcano - and had raised the alert status for Tongariro on July 20 - but had not expected the eruption.

"It just snuck up on us,’ Scott added.

Pitched almost at the center of New Zealand’s North Island, Tongariro is technically a volcanic massif that rears to 6,490 feet.

It lies in an area of particularly dramatic scenery. Its near-neighbor Mount Ngauruhoe was used by film director Peter Jackson for the forbidding outcrop of Mount Doom in his cinematic telling of JRR Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings novels.

Although on a strict geological basis, Ngauruhoe is a volcanic vent of the Tongariro massif, it is usually seen as a separate mountain, and has been more active than Tongariro in recent years, last erupting in 1975.

Nobody was injured in yesterday’s eruption, but hiking trails around Mount Tongariro were closed.

The two main roads in the area - State Highways 1 and 46 - received a covering of ash that was as deep as five centimeters in parts, and were temporarily shut to traffic.

The smell of sulphur from the eruption was reported in Napier, 80 miles from the volcano, on the east coast of the North Island.