Mount Etna

[bjdeming]

This is a big old famous volcano that usually puts on spectacular displays of lava from its summit, so frequently that I haven't flagged it much (other than a Decade Volcano eBook chapter) or mentioned it here.

However, this doesn't happen much:



Those upper parts are uninhabited, fortunately, and the summit is probably an exclusion zone since Etna has been quite active lately, and reshaping all the craters.

The only eruption hazards here usually are lava flows from flank eruptions, which occur closer to inhabited lower zones.


INGV is all over it. Per Google Translate of their bulletin issued an hour ago:

Date: 2025/06/02 12:00 (10:00 UTC)
ETNA STATEMENT

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Etnean Observatory, reports that the images from the surveillance system cameras show, at 09:24 UTC, a pyroclastic flow probably produced by a collapse of material from the northern flank of the South-East Crater. The hot material, from preliminary observations, seems not to have passed the edge of the Valle del Leone. At the same time, the explosive activity from the South East Crater has changed to a lava fountain.

The volcanic tremor has reached very high values with the centroid of the sources located in the area of the South-East Crater. Infrasonic activity is also high with events localized in correspondence with the South East Crater.

The deformation signal of the DRUV station continues the trend of variation started with the activity. The other deformation monitoring networks do not show significant variations..

Further updates will be promptly transmitted.

I'm at the fag end of a night of writing so I can't dig into this now. INGV is on bsky.app and I will put up that chapter -- it's general and very long but will provide an overview of the whole volcano, which is an amazingly complex fire mountain -- and then will add other monitoring links below.

From the chapter:

Monitoring:

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and its Etna Observatory. (Italian)

Mount Etna probably keeps observers at the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC) very busy.

Volcano Discovery has a page of embedded INGV webcams as well as a couple of unofficial Etna cameras.

 

[bjdeming]

Well, it's okay. Per Google translation of their most recent update (Italian, PDF), Etna's overall activity hasn't changed (it is capable of great violence, but rarely and in the distant past).

Three lava flows occurred after that weighty material flowed off (none of it getting dangerously close to inhabited areas apparently, though they'll be going up for measurements as soon as they can) and all the signals now have calmed down.

 

[bjdeming]

The Global Volcanism Program Etna page's weekly and bulletin reports are a good way to get familiar with Etna's current activity, which is almost constant (but typically not threatening in recent times -- not sure, but I think the last major hassle it gave us humans was in the 1990s when a flank flow destroyed a popular camping area and almost invaded a town; lava diversion stopped that).

 

[bjdeming]

Just a little follow-up. This INGV blog post (autotranslated) about their early-warning system puts the collapse and pyroclastic flow into context.

On June 2, 2025, Etna had a new paroxysmal eruption of great intensity, which began at night and lasted several hours. The activity started from the South-East Crater, with Strombolian explosions of increasing intensity and frequency that evolved into lava fountain activity . Subsequently, a partial collapse of the northern flank of the crater produced a pyroclastic flow that poured into the Valle del Leone, raising a cloud of ash and other pyroclastic material visible in much of eastern Sicily. The paroxysm had been announced by the early warning system of the INGV Osservatorio Etneo...

No system could have foreseen the collapse, but the EWS did pick up the intense eruptive paroxysm that preceded it.

Meanwhile, a lot of online coverage that I've seen called the dramatic flow (which was a density current following mass movement) an eruption.

It's real hard to accurately report on volcanoes. Their behavior is complex, and a writer has to take the readers' perceptions and generally nonscientific background into account.

 

[bjdeming]

And as a PS, this is a good Etna expert to follow if you're on X:

 

[bjdeming]

Volcanologists who study Etna are very proud of this volcano -- it is intellectually difficult to grasp even for them; it is huge, majestic, and a diva.



Not AI, given the source and the fact that the video was uploaded twelve years ago. That's Etna on a November night in 2013 -- just one of the active summit craters.

It's like a potato chip -- you can't say just one thing about this many-faceted fire mountain that dominates eastern Sicily. Guess that's why I don't cover it much -- there are other active volcanoes to talk about (and I think Kilauea Iki, 1959, owns the lava spectacle field to date).

No more now, unless some major change or development (like another pyroclastic flow) happens.

 

[bjdeming]

I had been thinking the pyroclastic flow happened because debris piled up from the morning's eruption and then collapsed, but per
the AP:

…After a 19-day lull, Etna began to erupt with lively explosive bursts of gas and ash followed by a mild lava flow on the eastern slope followed by a smaller flow to the south.
At around 10 a.m. Monday, Etna exploded with its first major, violent eruption of the year: Lava fountains and a column of ash and gas rose several kilometers (miles) in the air. The event climaxed around 11:23 a.m. when the pyroclastic flow, triggered when magma mixed with snow, traveled 2 kilometers (more than a mile) to the Valle del Leone within a minute.
By late afternoon, scientists said the event had subsided…

 

[bjdeming]

It's getting a little explosive again, which is just Etna being Etna.





Let's see if this develops into anything unusually intense.