A nuee ardente is a cloud of burning hot gas that travels quickly down the side of a volcano during an eruption. It is a type of pyroclastic flow. Small particles of dust and ash may be carried in the cloud, which kills anyone and anything it passes over. In 1902 a nuee ardente accompanying the eruption of Mount Pelee accounted for the deaths of all but one of the inhabitants of St Pierre, on the island of Martinique.