This week was chock full of weather phenomena in the skies. Over the path of totality, the solar eclipse wowed millions. And over Italy, Mount Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, was showing off again.
Last week, the Sicilian volcano began emitting an unprecedented amount of vapor rings from the mouth of a newly formed crater near the summit of the volcano, according to the Associated Press. Experts say these unusual “smoke rings” are made up of gas and vapor.
Etna last made news in December, when the volcano spewed a “swarm” of “light-gray ash emissions” from the Bocca Nuova Crater, according to the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History’s Global Volcanism Program.
As People magazine reports, the vapor rings have volcanologists (yes, that’s a thing) and others who follow Mount Etna calling out the new activity. “Etna is breaking all previous records,” Boris Behncke, volcanologist at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) – the prestigious institute that directly supervises Etna’s activities – said in a Facebook post, according to Fox News.
“In the late afternoon of 2 April 2024, a small mouth opened on the north-eastern rim of the South-East Crater, producing puffs of glowing gas. By the next morning it was evident that these puffs were producing an impressive amount of steam rings, and this activity has been going on ever since, having already emitted hundreds if not thousands of these pretty rings.”
Speaking with The Washington Post, Behncke said the emissions “look pretty much like the ‘smoke rings’ produced by an able smoker.” An able smoker? The new activity has some locals now calling the volcano the “Lady of Rings” due to the phenomenon, according to The Guardian.
Fun Fact: Etna actually produces the most rings of any other volcano in the world, Behncke said.
But the unexpected sight has the volcanologist noting the beauty of it all. “Someone said ‘Maybe because we receive so much bad news lately, Etna has decided to do something simply beautiful,’ ” Behncke wrote on X on April 5.
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