BJ Deming

Etna, 2025 (Dec. 28 2025, 0116 UTC)

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One of many online Etna cams:

Follow INGV on BlueSky and here are some monitoring links:

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December 27, 2025, 5:16 p.m., Pacific: Etna is so frequently active that I didn’t include it in the Restless Volcanoes list on the basis that Etna will be Etna.

However, today it has had another of those intense explosive rounds.

Per INGV (browser translation):

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Etnean Observatory, reports that with improved visibility, it is now possible to see the entire eruptive theater.

At 6:48 PM, a series of strong explosions began at the Northeast Crater, spewing coarse pyroclastic material across the entire cone and well beyond its base. At the time of this release, sporadic Strombolian explosions, some very strong, are occurring at the Northeast Crater.

Meanwhile, activity has intensified at the vent located on the upper flank of the Voragine crater, which is currently producing a constant fountain several dozen meters high. The lava flow emitted from a vent at the eastern base of the Voragine reported in the 11:36 AM release is still being fed; satellite imagery taken this morning estimated that it had traveled approximately 1.8 km east, toward the Valle del Bove. The average amplitude of the volcanic tremor, after the rapid decrease reported in the previous release, stabilized, albeit at high values, until approximately 18:45 UTC, when a new sudden increase occurred that lasted until approximately 19:15 UTC. Subsequently, the amplitude returned to values ​​comparable to those observed before this last brief event. The location of the centroid of the volcanic tremor sources is currently unavailable for technical reasons. The last available location at 17:00 UTC showed the centroid remaining in an area slightly NW of the Northeast Crater at an elevation of approximately 2800-3000 m above sea level. After a temporal decrease associated with the reduction in volcanic tremor amplitude, infrasonic events, starting around 18:48 UTC, returned to very high frequency values ​​until around 18:10 UTC, with associated amplitudes in some cases very high. The events continue to be located primarily at the Northeast Crater and, to a lesser extent, at the Bocca Nuova. Analysis of ground deformation data shows no significant changes since the last release in any of the sensor networks.
The clinometer network also shows substantial stability at the ECP summit clinometer since around 16:30. The DRUV dilatometer has also been stable since the same time. The high-frequency GNSS network continues to show no variations above the background noise.

This video has some good views of the strombolian activity.

June 21, 2025, 11:10 p.m., Pacific: Per INGV (and Google Translate):

#ETNA #VOLCANIC ACTIVITY RELEASE
During the night the #INGV #OsservatorioEtneo communicated that the activity described in the previous press releases has ended. During the day of the 19th it was not possible to observe the eruptive activity due to the weather conditions.

The weather has been cloudy sometimes but Etna still seems to be in a quiet moment.

June 19, 2025, 8:28 p.m., Pacific: According to the Etna Observatory:

This period of rest followed by renewal of eruptive activity is not at all unusual for Etna. Let’s keep the post pinned a while longer, though, to see if this round escalates to atypically powerful levels.

June 2, 2025, 8:55 p.m., Pacific: Just this one update — INGV announced at 1858 UTC that the episode was over. The pyroclastic flow didn’t get farther than the Valle del Bove (which is far enough!), in the uninhabited zones. Three brief lava flows occurred from the summit crater (Southeast Crater), but those are over now and signals have returned to normal.

PS: June 3, 2025, 11:36 p.m., Pacific: Per this INGV post about a new early warning system, intense fountaining preceded the collapse.

So, debris piled up quickly, overbalanced, toppled over, and spilled spectacularly down the uninhabited upper flank as a pyroclastic density current.

Let’s keep this post pinned for a while, since Etna is quite active, and see if anything else out of the ordinary happens there.

June 4, 2025, 6:05 p.m., Pacific: Correction, from 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…

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Follow INGV on BlueSky and here are some monitoring links:

Original post:

Here’s the reason why I just posted the Etna chapter of The Decade Volcanoes and Us:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

That doesn’t usually happen here, and INGV reports some changes, too. Per Google Translate of their recent bulletin:

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 about all wrote out just now but will get into this later. [Layperson speculation] I don’t think it’s a major change in behavior — Etna has been very active through its summit craters lately, and most likely some built-up debris collapsed.[/layperson speculation].

Don’t take my word for it, though.

Follow INGV on BlueSky and here are some monitoring links:

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.

Global Volcanism Program page

Featured image: Niccolò Ubalducci CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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