More than three months after the last of the many paroxysms of the year 2021, Etna did it again on February 10. Lava fountains several hundred meters high, lava flows, pyroclastic flows and a deep scar in the Southeast crater, the Sicilian giant has marked its return!
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After several months of intense activity, winter had settled on theEtna, the snow covering the black of the flows and slag composing the summit. A modest pour of wash on December 13 and a episode strong enough ashes the next day could however attest that the calm is always relative on theEtna…
As during the paroxysms of 2021, the activity animated the Southeast crater, the cone most active volcanic of this volcano. Moreover, the intense activity of the past year has enabled it to reach approximately 3,357 meters of altitude, making this crater the summit of the volcano, a mark that it steals from its neighbor the North-East crater which was the summit for forty years!
L’incandescent returned to the interior of this volcanic cone on the night of February 9 to 10, associated with a modest explosive activity producing some weak ash emissions in a discontinuous manner. The activity continued thus during the day and, around 3:20 p.m., a lava flow appeared to the south of this Southeast crater. Then, the explosive activity intensified with more intense and more frequent explosions, so that, around 6:45 p.m., the explosions were linked almost continuously.
The eruption gained further intensity afterwards, with the climax strictly speaking between 9:30 p.m. and 10:40 p.m.: the magmatic degassing was then continuous, at the origin of jets of lava impressive from 500 to 600 meters high! The ashes produced by these lava fountains fed a column eruptive which reaches an altitude of about 10 kilometers, bent towards the northwest by the winds and at the origin of some fallout in inhabited areas.
A pyroclastic flow and the deeply modified Southeast crater
At 10:26 p.m. precisely, the southern flank of this Southeast crater was completely ripped open, causing a pyroclastic flow about 1,500 meters long towards the south, in an area where tourists come to admire the summit of the volcano… Fortunately, this sudden event took place in the middle of the night and during a non-tourist period, because these clouds of gas and ashes are fast and therefore extremely dangerous! Be that as it may, the southern flank of this volcano now appears completely gutted: a deep scar the notch from top to bottom!
This superb paroxysm is the first of the year 2022. It comes more than three months after that of October 23 which was the last of the incredible sequence started on February 16, 2021, a sequence that has seen more than fifty paroxysms of this type follow one another, sometimes with almost perfect regularity! Is this part of the same sequence? Is this an isolated event or does it mark the beginning of a great new year on this volcano? We will see. In the meantime, a Sicilian explained yesterday that she was not physically and mentally ready to sweep the ashes again on her Terrace every three days… A testimony that reminds us that, if the risks during these summit eruptions are very modest, they can still seriously disturb the inhabitants!
Superb images of the paroxysm of February 10! © Michele Mamino
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