Last night, Etna in Sicily produced another paroxysm. Virtually without warning, the tremor shot up at 21.15 UCT (22.15 CET) and already an hour later the eruption was heading towards its peak. A lava fountain was again produced from New Southeast Crater and multiple lava flows were underway. This time, the lava flowed not only into Valle del Bove, but also in a southerly direction. VAAC detected volcanic ash at an altitude of 10,000 m. The tremor amplitude was a bit larger than during the February 16 paroxysm. MIROVA registered an extremely high thermal radiation with a power of 17,000 MW! Indeed a very extreme value and I don’t remember to have seen something like that at Etna in recent times. Even now it is quite hot in the area of New Southeast Crater, which can be seen nicely on ThermalCam. In the latest Sentinel satellite photo from February 16, hot vents can be seen in all 4 summit craters.
This eruption confirms once again that it is virtually impossible to predict these paroxysms by statistics. Yesterday I postulated an eruption interval of almost 4 weeks, this time the next eruption came after 28 hours. It would not be atypical if we would see more outbreaks in the short term, but of course the break interval may lengthen again, or shorten even further.
In Our FB group, numerous media were shared again