A short period of elevated lava spattering produced a short-lived lava flow from the northern crater area to the upper Sciara del Fuoco yesterday afternoon from around 16:25. The flow lasted only a few hours at most and traveled about 100 m on the upper slope.
Overall, the volcano has been at elevated activity level during the past weeks. This isn’t based only on the visible activity (e.g. the size of strombolian explosions, which hasn’t been particularly strong), but takes into account other geophysical parameters detected by instruments, which reflect a state of elevated internal activity of the volcano: in particular, CO2 and SO2 gas emissions as well as a particular type of volcanic quakes (LP events) have been at significantly higher levels than during most times. These all indicate that magma supply at depth is higher than normal. This in turn is likely to result in increased activity at the surface in a short to medium term future.