During 1-8 March, volcanic activity remained relatively high at Shiveluch. Four short-lived explosive eruptions visible from the town of Klyuchi, 46 km from the volcano, produced ash-and-gas plumes to heights of 1-3 km above the volcano's lava dome. On 3 March at 1500 a mixture of red ash and snow fell in Klyuchi. The ash may have been produced from an eruption at 1447. Seismicity included earthquakes with magnitudes less than 2.4 at depths of 0-5 km, many local shallow seismic signals (from possible avalanches or weak gas-ash explosions), and episodes of weak intermittent volcanic tremor. Thermal anomalies were visible on satellite imagery. The volcano remained at Color Concern Code Orange ("volcano is in eruption or eruption may occur at any time").

Geological Summary. The high, isolated massif of Sheveluch volcano (also spelled Shiveluch) rises above the lowlands NNE of the Kliuchevskaya volcano group. The 1,300 km3 andesitic volcano is one of Kamchatka's largest and most active volcanic structures, with at least 60 large eruptions during the Holocene. The summit of roughly 65,000-year-old Stary Shiveluch is truncated by a broad 9-km-wide late-Pleistocene caldera breached to the south. Many lava domes occur on its outer flanks. The Molodoy Shiveluch lava dome complex was constructed during the Holocene within the large open caldera; Holocene lava dome extrusion also took place on the flanks of Stary Shiveluch. Widespread tephra layers from these eruptions have provided valuable time markers for dating volcanic events in Kamchatka. Frequent collapses of dome complexes, most recently in 1964, have produced debris avalanches whose deposits cover much of the floor of the breached caldera.

Sources: Kamchatkan Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT), Vladivostok News