| Iceland's gotten all the press of late, but there are other volcanoes in the world. One of the more famous ones, Italy's Mount Etna, spent Monday night into Tuesday morning sending up cascading fountains of lava and throwing out car-sized molten rocks. The volcano's southeast crater began to show fractures on the Monday afternoon, says volcanologist Tom Pfeiffer, who leads volcano tours through Volcano Discovery. At just after midnight Tuesday morning it began to mildly erupt and the tour group walked to a viewpoint on the rim of the Valle del Bove. At around 2:30 am the volcano began to send up fountins of lava 1,600 feet into the air, Pfeiffer said via email from Italy. "At the peak of the eruption at around 3 am, the fountains pulsated between an estimated 500-800 m height, with large incandescent bombs visible more than 1 kilometer above the vent and landing behind southeast crater," he wrote. "The fountains gradually decreased by around 4 am and the activity turned into exploding giant lava bubbles, detonating with loud noise, and throwing large bombs up to 1 km in spherical directions above the crater. This activity slowly waned until dawn. While the fountains lasted, the crater wall was completely covered by incandescent lava." |
