A busy day for Etna and Galeras

Today was a doubleheader for volcanic eruptions in the news:

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nToday’s explosive eruption from Mt. Etna. Image courtesy of the INGV.

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• As I briefly mentioned earlier, Galeras in Colombia had an “atypical” eruption – apparently meaning it was non-explosive – that has prompted evacuations and a change in the alert status to “Red” for the volcano. Various news sources don’t have a lot of new information yet, but you can check on the report on the INGEOMINAS page (spanish) – and they have links to some of the Galeras news (audio, spanish) from their main page. Some of the latest reports from Colombia (spanish) indicate that the eruption is “ongoing” but “under control” and areas around the volcano are experiencing some ash fall. However, Diego Gomez of the Volcano Observatory in Pasto is calling Galeras a “very unstable volcanic system” right now, so we’ll keep an close watch on the volcano – which you can do from the webcam.

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• Less than a week after Boris Behncke’s great series on the volcano, Italy’s Etna has decided to keep our attention by having an explosive eruption earlier today. The INGV already has a great post on the event (italian and english) on their website with pictures and thermal images of the ash-rich explosion that produced the 1-km tall plume. This is the largest explosive event this summer from the Bocca Nuova (“New Mouth?”) vent. Again, if Etna is heading into a new eruptive cycle, we’ll all want to watch the events unfold – and luckily there is a webcam for that as well.

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For both of these events, updates as they arrive!

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{Special thanks to all the Eruptions readers who have posted links/info.}