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This photo was taken 5 hours ago in Sicily, IT:
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By Boris Behncke
Just a moment later this lava fountain became HUGE
When the New Southeast Crater at the summit of Etna wakes up after having been asleep for some time, there is always a good chance that this renewed activity will soon evolve into another one of those amazing "paroxysms", short and extremely intense episodes of high lava fountaining, ash emission, and generation of lava flows. So that's what many of us expected to see when the crater reactivated on the late afternoon of 15 March 2013 after nearly 10 days of quiescence - but this time, the buildup to the paroxysm was quite slow - it took more than 24 hours, before the paroxysm finally came.
Not only did the volcano tease us, also the weather looked like it was not exactly willing to collaborate - clouds covered the volcano most of the day on 16 March, while the bangs from the explosions rattled our windows every few seconds. I noted, though, that on the southwestern side, there seemed to be an open corridor in the clouds, so maybe from that side one would see the activity, and in the afternoon I drove up the mountain to a place known as Piano Vetore hoping to get a view of the action...