From: Anchorage Daily News

DINGY: Snow went from ‘white to gray’ in matter of minutes, observers in Anchorage report.

Anchorage finally got a taste and smell of Redoubt volcano Saturday afternoon when the sky darkened and ash began to drift from a massive, menacing cloud that rose up from the south and slowly enveloped the city.

It was only a light ash fall, posing little risk to healthy people or most machines.

But the sulfurous air unmistakably said volcano. So did the raspy feeling in throats and eyes all over town and from a wide swath of Southcentral Alaska from the Mat-Su Borough to Valdez. Nikiski, on the Kenai Peninsula, was also affected.

The ash cloud emerged from an eruption at 3:29 p.m., the second on Saturday afternoon, and caught the express to Anchorage. With a wind advisory also in effect, it took only about an hour before people were phoning in reports of ash from South Anchorage and the Hillside, less than 100 miles northeast of the Cook Inlet volcano.

By 7 p.m., most of the ash cloud had passed on from the city to the Mat-Su Borough to the north….

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