Arizona Public Radio | Your Source for NPR News
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
SERVICE ALERT:

Our 88.7 transmitter site sustained a fire of unknown origin. We have installed a bypass that has returned us to full power for most, though repairs are still ongoing. Our HD service remains inoperable. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we continue to work on the transmitter. Online streaming remains unaffected.

Does Frodo Know? There's Rumbling Near 'Mount Doom'

A massive plume of ash billows up into the sky as Mount Tongariro erupts at Tongariro National Park earlier today in New Zealand.
Reuters /Landov
A massive plume of ash billows up into the sky as Mount Tongariro erupts at Tongariro National Park earlier today in New Zealand.

There's been a volcanic eruption at New Zealand's Mount Tongariro, where ash has been spewed thousands of feet into the air. Sightseers are being warned to stay well away.

What makes the news quite timely, though, as fans of the Lord of The Rings movies will tell you, is that Tongariro National Park served as the backdrop for the climatic scenes and that the park's Mount Ruapehu "stood in for Mount Doom."

Meanwhile, there's concern that Ruapehu also might soon erupt, The New Zealand Herald reports.

This news comes just as director Peter Jackson's next movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic books arrives. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premieres in New Zealand next week and around the world in December.

A volcanic eruption would be better publicity that what the movie got earlier this week, when the news broke that some of the animals used in the film died at the farm where they were being housed. Wranglers blamed unsafe conditions. The movie's producers said that when they found out about the problems, the moved quickly to fix them.

The BBC has video of Tongariro's eruption.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.