Stromboli Explosion: Volcano In Italy Abruptly Erupts, Shoots Out ‘Lava Bombs’

A volcano located at the island of Stromboli, Italy, erupted at 3 a.m. Sunday, sending masses of “lava bombs” down on areas visited by hikers.

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology’s observatory at Etna reported a “explosion of strong intensity” at Stromboli followed by volcanic activity early Sunday morning. The Laboratory of Experimental Geophysics at the University of Florence reported that the eruption lasted for four minutes. (RELATED: ‘A Looming Catastrophe’: UN Official Warns Oil Tanker Could Spill Four Times More Oil Than Exxon Valdez)

Video taken from a webcam shows lava pouring out of the volcano and onto a slope, called Sciara del Fuoco. The slope is a popular tourist attraction and left one person dead after the volcano erupted in 2019, per Reuters. Dr. Tom Pfeiffer of VolcanoDiscovery.com wrote that the explosion “showered the entire crater terrace and beyond with incandescent lava bombs.”

“According to geophysical data, this morning’s explosion was about 10 times stronger than the average size of explosions at the volcano and comparable to the large eruption on 15 March 2017, but still about one order of magnitude smaller than the two paroxysms last year on 3 July and 28 August 2019,” Pfeiffer said on VolcanoDiscovery.com.

Pfeiffer said that the explosion came without warning and that the volcano had rather low activity levels in the past few weeks, per VolcanoDiscovery.com.