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More than anything else, it's water. The caldera is a natural rain-catcher, and cracks in surface rocks fill when it rains, and percolates down to deeper cracks. The pressure of the overlaying rock keeps the water from expanding into steam even at temperatures much higher than 100 degrees C = 212 degrees F. When underlaying magma starts pushing upward, sometimes in conjunction with a quake that 'crumbles' the overlaying rock, the water then 'flashes' into steam and takes only a few seconds to blow loose material out of the caldera. As the magma wells up and emerges, becoming lava, it too no longer has the weight of the volcano pressing it down so any gases it contains would expand and cause more explosions.

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