Plumes of ash as high as nine miles spewed into the air Sunday as Mount Redoubt, near Anchorage Alaska, erupted at least four times.

Of the four eruptions the largest sent a cloud of ash into the air which drifted for miles, explained scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The first eruption, in a sparsely populated area across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula, occurred at 10.38pm, Sunday (0638 Monday GMT) and the fourth happened at 1.39am, (0939 GMT) Monday, according to the observatory.

Mount Redoubt is roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage; however the ash is traveling away from the city toward Willow and Talkneetna, near Mount McKinley. 19 flights were cancelled by Alaskan Airlines out of Anchorage to be on the safe side.

This is the first eruption from the icy volcano in 20 years with the last eruption occurring in 1989.

Scientists in Alaska have been warning about the certainty of the volcano erupting since earlier this year when they first noticed it becoming restless.

On Sunday morning, just prior to the eruption, seismic readings were recording 40 to 50 mini earth quakes per hour.

“This is a fairly large eruption, close to the larger cities in Alaska,” said Geophysicist John Power.

He said a light dusting of ash was expected to fall on the Susitna Valley but no cities had yet reported any ash fall from the volcano.

An explosion had been expected for months which is why the observatory had been requested by Alaskan scientists and officials. Some politicians in more southern states had scoffed at the idea of an Alaskan volcano erupting on a scale that would endanger humans or require observation.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal chided the Democrats for funding monitoring of the volcano calling volcano monitoring an unnecessary frill in the government’s stimulus package. “While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending and includes $300-million to buy new cars for the government, $8-billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140-million for something called volcano monitoring,” Mr. Jindal said. “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.”

A month later the residents of cities around Mount ReDoubt while watching 15 km plumes of ash belch into the air are very glad of the money spent of volcano monitoring and ash trackin