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<\/a>We stopped at the site of an explosion in the mid 19th<\/sup> century, I believe, which left a variety of cones (big cones are caldera, usually where the explosion collapsed the area).\u00a0 Our guide told us that the cone explodes gas and ash, and the lava flows come from fissures; usually the fissures are a one-time phenomenon. Sometimes the cone will throw larger stones, called bombs. He showed us a variety of the rocks, from the dust and ash to the lava.<\/p>\n<\/a>The boat talk was by a government agent who\u2019s part of the monitoring of \u201cmomma Etna,\u201d which once had the traditional cone shape I associate with volcanoes (Fujiyama anyone?), but in the 20th<\/sup> century has gotten new craters\u2014including \u201cbig mouth\u201d (a more colorful name than South East) and the eruption of new craters has continued in 20th<\/sup> century\u2014even in the past year, new craters have emerged,\u00a0 a phenomenon never observed this quickly anywhere else in the world.\u00a0 He said explosions can be violent, with fragments of ash and gas which are blown downwind and ash covers everything.\u00a0 I remember when St. Helens blew in the ’80s, we had to wipe off ash from our cars.\u00a0 Here in Italy, he said, cleanup is slow. Dust can spread and make visibility difficult, roads slippery, and air bad to breathe.\u00a0 Lots of \u201chills\u201d we saw were baby craters at lower elevations.\u00a0 A 1669 eruption reached 10 km, down to the sea.<\/p>\n When we asked him about living in a volcanic area, he noted that only one of the modern explosions threatened a city on the slope, and the slow progress of lava took 5 weeks to reach the village, allowing everyone to move anything they wanted\u2014except their houses.\u00a0 Interestingly, there\u2019s no volcano insurance available in Italy, though there are some government funds.<\/p>\n He said the \u201cheat of pyroclastic (look that up in your dictionary) flows killed people in Pompeii,\u201d not the explosion, which is a product of the water vapor buildup from the intense heat.\u00a0 Other gases include carbon dioxide and sulphur oxide, which can leave a residue of yellow on the top of the mountain, looking at first glance like snow.<\/p>\n In all, it might have been smoking hot, but it was a pretty cool experience!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Smoking hot at Etna August 9, 2017 Heat has followed us this whole trip; it\u2019s been in the upper 90s every day.\u00a0 Rome, after all, has been hotter than New Delhi. But I awoke to a new \u201cheat\u201d this morning\u2014we\u2019re docked off Mount Etna, the largest and most active volcano in Europe. Some of the … Continue reading “Smokin’ Hot is Pretty Cool”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malta-and-italy-august-2017"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1615"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8538,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1615\/revisions\/8538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>We drove later to a lava flow, dating from the early 1990s.\u00a0 He explained how the lava flow perpetuates itself; as the upper layer cools and solidifies the lower layers stay warm (over 2500 degrees) and flow underneath, eventually breaking through and resuming their flow until eventually cooling and generally stopping.\u00a0 In the case of this particular lava flow, the nearby US Air Force base sent in helicopters with bombs to alter the path (kind of like setting counter fires).\u00a0 It\u2019s on youtube, and I do have to say that seeing the explosions and flows (we had a talk afterwards on the boat with visuals) are pretty spectacular.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have other chances\u2014the island of Stromboli, and later, Vesuvius and the Pompeii ruins.<\/p>\n