Montserrat

Montserrat: population and capital

Population

Population

According to Countryaah website, Montserrat only has a little over 5,000 residents after the volcanic eruptions of 1995 and 1997.

Ethnic composition

Of the population on the island are:

93% black and mixed race, 3% white and 4% other ethnic groups

Religious Affiliations

Of the island's population:

30% are Anglicans, 23% Methodists and 10% Catholics. Also Pentecostal, Seventh-Day Adventists and other Christian communities.

National languages

The national language is English.

Capital

The island's capital before the 1995 and 1997 volcanic eruptions was Plymouth. In 1997 the city was officially abandoned. It's Brades Estate now. But a new capital is under construction in Little Bay on the northwest side. The project in the Little Bay region aims to revitalize the island, which has been badly affected by the volcanic eruption. In some time the new economic, cultural, social and political center of the island will be located here. There will be a marina, business district, office buildings, and administrative and government buildings. In addition, a boulevard with cafes, boutiques and restaurants, a new attraction on the island, invites people to linger and enjoy.

Montserrat: geography

Area and boundaries

Defined by DigoPaul, the island of Montserrat covers an area of around 102 km². The island is of volcanic origin and consists mainly of three volcanic massifs, namely the Silver Hills in the north, the Center Hills in the middle and the Soufrière Hills in the south. Only the volcano in the Soufrière Hills in the south is active.

Borders

The island has no direct neighbors and therefore no national borders.

Coastline

Montserrat has a coast to the Caribbean with a total length of around 50 km.

Longitude and latitude of Montserrat

The island of Montserrat extends over the following geographical latitude (abbreviation Δφ) and geographical longitude (abbreviation Δλ):

You can find detailed information on this subject under Longitude and Latitude.

Legal time on Montserrat

For Montserrat, the following value applies to Central European Time (CET), i.e. the time (without summer time). A minus sign means that it is earlier there and a plus sign that it is later than CET. There is no summer or winter time on Montserrat.

Further and detailed explanations of the time can be found under Time zones, time.

Highest point of the sun in Brades Estate

Brades Estate, the current capital of the island, lies at a north latitude of around φ = 16 ° and 48` - and thus in the middle of the tropics.

If the declination δ of the sun has the value of 16 ° and 48` N, and thus the image point of the sun is above the island or Brades, the sun is perpendicular there. This happens exactly twice a year, roughly 65 days after the 21./22. March and then again 65 days before September 21st.

Attention

If the image point of the sun and thus the declination δ is north of the latitude of Brades, the sun is not in the south at noon, as in our latitudes, but in the north. In this case, the sun moves from east to north to west, where, like us, it sets.

Further and detailed explanations can be found under Sun position

mountains

Soufrière Hills

The highest mountain in the country is the lava dome in English's Crater - in the Soufriere Hills massif with a height of around 1,050 m. Two recent eruptions from this volcano are particularly noteworthy:

On July 18, 1995, there was a major volcanic eruption. As a result, the southern part of the island was evacuated from August 21st. By the end of October, a series of further eruptions followed in several craters, as a result of which the southern half of the island with the then island capital Plymouth was covered by volcanic ash. From November 14th, a lava dome was formed from rising magma. The breaking off of the increasingly steep lava dome resulted in pyroclastic avalanches that raced down the slopes at speeds of over 100 km/h and destroyed everything on their way.

On June 25, 1997, there was another severe outbreak with pyroclastic avalanches that reached previously unaffected areas. 19 farmers were killed because they had resisted evacuation. The eruptions of the volcano lasted until September 1997. After that, all the communities and towns on the southern half of the island - including the airport - were covered with such a thick layer of ash that they became absolutely uninhabitable. The entire southern part of the island has been a restricted area since then.

There are film and photo recordings of an approximately 11 km high ash cloud, the tip of which glowed red in the sunlight and was reminiscent of a rose opening - an eerily beautiful picture.

Caribbean

The island of Montserrat is located in the Caribbean - southeast of Nevis and northwest of Guadeloupe.

The Caribbean

The Caribbean is a marginal sea of the Atlantic and lies between the islands of the Caribbean and the American continent. In the west, Mexico and other Central American states border the Caribbean. In the south of Colombia and Venezuela. The border in the east and north form the following islands or archipelagos starting from Venezuela in a semi-circle to the "actual" Atlantic: Trinidad and Tabago, Grenada, St. Lucia, Dominica, British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba.

The deepest point in the Caribbean is the Cayman Rift between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands with a depth of 7,680 m. Together with the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean forms the "American Mediterranean".