After the rather surprising onset of a new intense phase of activity in the late afternoon, the New SE crater produced not only one, but two paroxysms during the night, marking them the 26th and 27th such episodes for 2021 so far.
Likely compensating the suddenly much shorter intervals, the eruptions were significantly weaker, though, when compared with earlier paroxysms observed in Feb-Mar and May this year.
Last night’s activity reached its peak between around 20:30-21:30 local time, when explosions from the New SE crater merged into lava fountains and the lava flow towards the SW was most strongly fed.
Activity abruptly ceased and volcanic tremor dropped sharply and returned to low levels by 22:30. The volcano remained calm until 02:40 am early this morning. Calm, this is except occasional glow hinting towards that strombolian explosions from Voragine central summit crater still go on as well. Like the other summit vents of Bocca Nova and NE crater, the Voragine seems to act almost completely unaffected by what is happening at the New SE crater.
The calm didn’t last very long, though: at 02:40, activity suddenly picked up again at the New SE crater and quickly developed a second paroxysm with lava fountaining that lasted until around 4am, before ceasing again. As during the preceding phase, yet another lava flow was erupted from the main vent of the New SE crater towards the southwestern base.
The following time-lapse shows the whole sequence of activity between yesterday afternoon and this morning:
How the activity likely will continue is uncertain – given that the volcano has broken the rather stable pattern of 40-48 hours between individual events, it hints that it is in a more unstable phase right now, and it can only be speculated upon what and when might come next.