A stronger-then-usual explosion occurred yesterday afternoon at the volcano.
The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Catania reported that at 15:19 local time, an intense explosion took place from the vent in the Central-South crater area, sending lapilli and lava bombs to the upper Sciara del Fuoco and the Pizzo area (which used to be a popular viewing area, now closed).
Volcanic tremor increased temporarily to medium-high values starting from 14:30 and later decreased again to medium-low values. The explosion illustrates one of the main hazards when visiting the volcano from close: it came during a phase of generally low activity and had no detected precursor.
Overall, activity at the volcano had decreased from high in early June to comparably low levels over the past weeks, according to the latest daily summary published by the Experimental Geophysical Laboratory (LGS) of the University of Florence, which taks into account various observed and measured monitoring data.
During the latest 24 hour period published last night, the visible activity at the summit vents was characterized by weak degassing and small explosions from multiple vents, but mainly the central and southwestern ones, at high rate (144 events counted in total, or approx. 5-6 per hour on average). Explosions from the NE sector (towards Stromboli village) tended to be stronger.
The volcanic tremor was stable at medium values while degassing activity was low in SO2 and moderate in CO2. No significant deformation was noted recently.
