Etna is known to be one of the most active volcanoes on Earth. Many also believe it to be a rather harmless, good-mannered volcano, which most of the time is true, although (quite rarely, like once every 200-plus years) it does indeed bury entire villages under lava flows, and the risk of lava invading populated areas is quite elevated. However, there is no elevated risk for those areas when the volcano erupts from one or more of its four summit craters - there's just a high probability to feel emotionally overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the summit eruptions. Last year, during the night of 12-13 January 2011, Etna returned on the scene after one-and-a-half years of repose, producing what technically is called an "eruptive episode", a short-lived event (normally lasting only a few hours), but also the word "paroxysm" is often used for this sort of event. "Paroxysm" implies something rather violent, and Etna's paroxysms are violent indeed, but most of all, they are breathtakingly spectacular. The year 2011 eventually saw 18 paroxysmal eruptive episodes from Etna, some of which were of exceptional beauty, most were quite well documented both in photographs and video, which then made the tour of the world via the Internet. My small YouTube video collection contains a few scenes from several of those paroxysms. The latest occurred on 15 November 2011 and once more was of fierce beauty and sheer violence - an act of brutal creation, which left a mountain 200 m tall, the <b>...</b>
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The
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