A swarm of small earthquakes has been occurring under the volcano since yesterday: about 50 tiny quakes with magnitudes between 1.0 and 2.2 were detected over the past 24 hours in an area on the lower eastern flank, roughly between the towns of Milo, Mascali and Giarre.
The depths of the quakes are mostly between 10-20 km in the lower crust where they might – or might not – indicate small events related to magma storage at lower reservoirs. It seems unlikely this will directly affect or translate into changes of the surface activity of the volcano in any near future. This is, at least, as long as the earthquakes are small as they are and don’t approach shallower levels.
New SE crater calms down again, remains weakly active
At the surface, the volcano has remained quite calm. The recently observed trend of increasing activity at the New SE crater has reversed again. During the past 36 hours, there were only sporadic ash emissions with weak glow visible sometimes at night, suggesting that explosions are only small and occurring deep inside the vent, without ejecting glowing material above the crater rim.
