Hello and welcome

20th May 2012

Bad day today with the M6.0 earthquake in Ferrara Itally .

Magnitude : M6.0
UTC Time : Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 02:03:52 UTC
Local time at epicenter : Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 04:03:52 AM at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 5.1 km
Geo-location(s) :
7 km NW Finale emilia (pop 15,337)
30 km W Ferrara (pop 131,771)
36 km (22 miles) NNW of Bologna, Italy

And the webicoder from Etna picked it up.

6 people have died and about 50 injured. In San Felice sul Panaro, near Modena, the tower of the fortress collapsed. A church bell collapsed in Ferrara, in Finale Emilia a church steeple was reported damage, in San Felice Parano a segment of a castle collapsed.

Full information can be found here

3rd May 2012

Popocatépetl

At the moment this is a VEI-1 or VEI-2 eruption and at the moment alternating between dome extrusions and ashy explosions. Looks good on the cams. I think the danger of lahars are quite small as the glacier ontop of the volcano has become much smaller over the years. But as will any volcano things can change in minutes.
Residents close to the volcano however are on the alert because of the gas and ash which is being thrown high in the air.

The 24 April 2012 paroxysm of Etna

During the early morning hours of 24 April 2012, the new Southeast Crater of Etna produced yet another episode of lava fountaining. This is the 25th such event in the current eruptive sequence that started in January 2011

The most peculiar detail was that the first significant activity of this episode was the quiet and slow push out of a lava flow but with no accompaning explosive activity. This started on the morning of 23 April. The last time this was seen was during the paroxysmal episodes of 2000-2001 at the old Southeast Crater, most of which started with quiet lava outflow from vents on the flanks of the cone. The main lava fountaining phase of 24 April 2012 was a repetition of the preceding paroxysms. At the moment it looks like she is happy doing these paroxysms and building that new cone and this may continue for some time. Sooner or later something different will happen, perhaps a flank eruption , but currently there's no sign that this will happen soon , hopefully.

23rd April

18.40 GMT

Lava is already flowing.

Since the early morning hours of 23 April 2012, lava has been flowing a vent on the southeastern flank of the new Southeast Crater cone. A little worrying is that she is behaving differently this time. At the moment  there is no explosive activity accompanying the lava outflow as in the other episodes.