[Rockhounds] Why scientists are excited about Italy's volcanoes

[pmodreski at aol.com]

 And some of us are excited about the Italian volcanoes, because we were just there, this May!  A trip I'd been wanting to do and talking about doing for many years, and finally just did, this may, with my friend Bonnie and two longtime geologist friends from Germany. We finally started planning for it seriously, last summer, and left for it on May 15, to meet Renata and Winfried in Naples.  We visited Vesuvius, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Pozzuoli and the Solfatara in the Phlegraean Fields caldera on the mainland; then went by ferry to Sicily and the Aeolian Islands, where we visited Etna, Stromboli, Lipari, and Vulcano, along with Palermo and Milazzo on Sicily. My German friends returned home after all this, while Bonnie and I continued on to visit Rome, Florence, Paris, Mont St-Michel, and Madrid. Oh, with a half day in Iceland too, not able to go further than the airport, town, and harbor of Keflavik. What a trip--lots of adventures! We were gone about 35 days altogether.
We were in Italy a month and a half before the big eruptions that took place at Etna and Stromboli!  Maybe a good thing (but, darn!), so at least we didn't get caught in any eruption clouds.  We did get to watch lava splashing out of the summit vents on Stromboli, but Etna, just steaming & smoking--it did blow at least one little smoke ring for us. And Vesuvius was totally quiet.
Hi to Kreigh and to all the rockhounds!
Pete Modreski, Wheat Ridge, CO (guess I just don't write posts to Rockhounds, very often any more)(And, just returned from most of the past month in Michigan, both southern, and the U.P.--just in the western Michigan iron country, did not make it to the copper country.)
    On Friday, August 9, 2024 at 09:46:54 AM MDT, Kreigh Tomaszewski <kreigh at gmail.com> wrote:   

 The top of the volcano exploded, sending a gigantic column of ash four or
five kilometres
<https://www.protezionecivile.gov.it/en/notizia/stromboli-update-volcanic-activity-and-civil-protection-response/>
(2.5-3
miles) into the sky. Mount Stromboli, off the north coast of Sicily, is one
of the most active volcanoes in the world. On 11 July, it produced a
paroxysm – a term in geology for a type of powerful eruption that
interrupts a period of milder volcanic activity. In the villages nestled
around the foot of the volcano, warning sirens blared.

The paroxysm occurred shortly after 2pm local time and news of the event
quickly began to spread online. Shortly after the explosion, two dozen or
so volcanologists around Europe were due to attend one of their regular
meetings. Chiara Maria Petrone, a volcano petrologist at the Natural
History Museum in the UK, joined the session online.

"We started the meeting just an hour after the paroxysm," she recalls. "It
was really exciting."

Immediately, the scientists began bringing each other up to speed. Some
shared real-time data from seismometers and other instruments. A few
attendees even happened to be on the island of Stromboli at the time,
according to Petrone, meaning they were able to describe what they were
seeing. "It was all just happening at that moment," says .

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240806-why-scientists-are-excited-about-italys-volcanoes
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