Mt Etna puffs smoke rings in rare display
Mt Etna, Europe’s largest active volcano, is delighting tourists and locals by blowing almost perfect circles of smoke into the blue skies over Sicily.
The smoke circles, known as volcanic vortex rings, are actually made of condensed gases and water vapour. They form when gases rise up from deep below the earth and escape inside the crater of a volcano.
Mt Etna is just one of a handful of volcanoes around the world that produces the rings but the latest emissions are exceptional, scientists say.
“No volcano on earth produces so many rings of steam as Etna. We have known this for quite some time. But now it is beating all previous records,” said Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania.
He has been studying the volcano and living close to it for the past 25 years.
Earlier this week, a small vent opened on the north-east edge of the south-east crater, which had emitted puffs of incandescent gas. The following morning, it became clear that these puffs were creating “an impressive quantity” of vortex rings.
Locals have dubbed the volcano Lady of the Rings due to the circles of vapour it has been emitting. “I thought I had hallucinations. I had never seen anything so spectacular and beautiful,” said Angela Intruglio, from Mascali, a town at the foot of Mt Etna that had to be rebuilt after it was destroyed in an eruption in 1928.
Experts say the unusual rings are harmless and aren’t necessarily a prelude to an imminent eruption. “It’s only an open conduit, of a circular shape, through which the gas is shot in a pulsing way,” said Behncke. “It’s really extraordinary and completely innocuous.” – Telegraph Group