Alarm Eruption

The early morning of 26th October 2013 a light earthquake woke up the town of Catania. It is the signal that a batch of magma has found its way up through the host rocks. A new eruption starts at the summit craters in Mt. Etna and an ash and gases column rises up for 10.000 meters in the clear sky of a no-wind-day.

 This end of October is absolutely not a normal autumn: sea water is near 23°C as well as the air temperature. In front of the village of Acitrezza many people enjoy the summer-like-day paddling, swimming, rowing, fishing, and laying as lizards under the warm sun. The sea gulls show already their winter plumage and probably were expecting a bit colder weather...

Me and a London inhabitant, climb up one of the stacks made by columnar basalts to have a view on the sea and the cloud generated from the eruption, less than 20 km far.

 

Common Sea Gull (Larus ridibundus) with the winter plumage.

 On the way back, in the afternoon, clouds cover the view of Etna volcano but we already had a wonderful day and a delicious fish soup in a restaurant overlooking the sea, just above the beach where we left the kayaks.