Mt. Redoubt shuts down the Anchorage Airport every few years. I was stuck in Bethel, several times, for over a week, due to ANC being closed due to ash.
old info from when i lived in other place another time..when helens blew up they used panty hose over inlets.other wise it got in engine and scarred it internally to ruination.changed panty hose often.all fleet rigs had surplus of panty hose inside in get home/self rescue box in rear.
What I heard was the issue was ash would very quickly clog the normal air filters so the car couldn't get any air, so people where just taking out the air filters entirely and ruining their engines. The idea of a panty hose or sock or something over the inlet was so that you could still have some kind of filter, but something that was a lot easier to knock clear so you could keep running.
What I think you would really want would be something like they have on Baja racers where they have a centrifugal canister settles most of the dust out where it drops to the bottom and is automatically dumped by a soft rubber flapper'valve' before the now pr-cleaned air goes through a regular filter.
In any case, it the issue isn't that regular filters don't work. They actually filter air very very well, the problem is just that if the air is full of fine dust the filter gets clogged to the point where no air gets through it.
all i can tell you is what went on in the aftermath of eruption and what was adopted as SOP in the days afterward
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