New eruption begins at Piton de la Fournaise

We spoke a few weeks ago about how Piton de la Fournaise on Reunion Island was looking like it might erupt soon. Well, “soon” was a little later than predicted – it was initially thought an eruption could come in days – but now a few weeks later the volcano has erupted (french). New reports coming in from the Indian Ocean island talk about a new vent opening on near “the Castle” on the upper south flank. This eruption started at 7:10 PM local time (for Reunion Island) after a sharp increase in the seismic activity (french) under the edifice that caused part od the Dolomieu crater to collapse. There are some new images of these basaltic lava flows from Piton de la Fournaise (see below) – and you can see if you can spot the glow from this new eruption on the Piton webcams. The volcano last erupted at the beginning of 2010 after significant eruptions during November of 2009.

I’ll post for details about the new eruption as I find them.

UPDATE: Here is an english-language article on the eruption.

{Hat tip to Eruptions readers Boris Behncke and Sherine France for info and links in this post.}

Piton de la Fournaise erupting on October 14, 2010.

Top left: An undated image of the slopes of Piton de la Fournaise.