The Daily Mail has a set of amazing photos of the Chaiten Volcano in southern Chile.

As clouds of toxic ash and dust tower into the sky, they ionise the air, generating an explosive electrical storm. Colossal forks of lightning spark around the noxious plume as it spews from the volcano’s crater, creating an image of raw, terrifying energy - as if the air itself were ablaze.

More than any damage the lava could do, most worrying is the possibility of pyroclastic flow, in which the enormous plume of ash collapses into a wave of hot gas and rock. The wave spreads across the ground at breakneck speeds with temperatures reaching up to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The devastating consequences were seen after the eruption of Mount Pelée, which led to the destruction of Saint-Pierre and its roughly 30,000 population.

cumul.us has launched. I wrote about it not so long ago, and here it is, finally (after a whole 11 days!). Tune into http://blog.cumul.us/ for updates.

(And while on the topic of sweet uses for sweet things: Foamee, a Twitter service that “helps track who you owe beers to (and vice versa)”.)

Over the past two months, Ben Tesch has been developing a weather aggregator designed to harness the wisdom of the crowd (pardon the web 2.0-ism): cumul.us. The site will feature three aspects to provide the most accurate (and useful) predictions possible:

1. Firstly, the site will combine as many possible sources of weather forecasts as possible.

2. Secondly, you can predict the weather yourself. When you make prediction for a particular time and place, the site will go check all of its data sources and record what really happened, and give you a score based on how right you were. Since the site will be tracking the accuracy of all of this, you’ll be able to see who is more right, and follow them.

3. Thirdly, the site will give you information on the real reason you check the weather: to find out what you should wear. As people submit what they are wearing, it goes into the aggregation of what everyone is wearing in order to suggest to other people what they should wear.

The first feature is pretty straightforward (weather data from sources like The Weather Channel, Accuweather, and Weather Underground will be shown in aggregate), and it’s really the second and third features that set cumul.us apart. And specifically the second feature that is causing the most controversy.

Since everyone else is doing it, I am going to throw in my own two cents. I see the site succeeding (at least in larger cities), because I see the site becoming a very responsive measure of current weather conditions. My roommates and I are always checking weather.com, but never for any extended forecast. What we’re interested in is how the weather is now, and maybe later in the day too. Who cares today what the weather is predicted to be tomorrow? I can check it tomorrow.

As much as I depend on weather.com for this information, it is inaccurate a significant amount of the time. Sometimes it is (ostensibly) because the site has not updated (right now the current conditions are 25 minutes behind), but most of the time the forecast is just too delayed. Too often have I looked out the window and seen a downpour while weather.com has told me “cloudy” or “chance of rain”.

This is where I think cumul.us will be really useful. “Professional” weather prediction will still be there (see feature 1), but the added bit of citizen meteorology will really boost the site. It may not say much about the crowd’s ability to accurately predict weather, but I don’t think that will really be a problem. Meteorology is a difficult science, and it may very well be left to the professionals for any sort of substantial forecast. But for the little stuff, the “How is it out? And what should I wear today?”, the crowd is the place to be.

Anyway, the site will be launching in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned. And check out the cumul.us photoset on Flickr for a preview.