#mount-etna

#mount-etna

With every eruption, towns such as Giarre experience an average of 12,000 tonnes of ashfall daily, which the wind can transport as far as 800km (497 miles). In July 2024, Catania Sicily's second-largest city, located at the foot of Mount Etna registered 17,000 tonnes of ash daily, which took nearly 10 weeks to collect.

The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation, which began on Monday, was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books. Firefighters drilled through the wall of a building behind the structure and entering for minutes at a time, strapped the bookcases together and hauled them backwards to reach the books.

A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump bags of rubbish by the roadside in an attempt to evade cameras installed by local authorities to combat fly-tipping, municipal police have said. The episode was detailed in a Facebook post on the city of Catania's official page. Accompanying a video of the dog was a remark from the police that inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility.

Villa Lava is a private residence located in Santa Tecla, in the province of Acireale, on the eastern coast of Sicily. The project is a unique architectural blend of two houses in one single villa. On one side stands an old fisherman's house dating from around 1900, completely restored by Nábito Architects, maintaining its essential character and carefully uncovering and preserving the original lava stone vaults.

WeatherA powerful early-week storm delivers very heavy snowfall to Mt. Etna, then tapers to lighter, higher-quality snow mid to late week as winds ease. Snow levels fluctuate between about 4,400 and 5,900 feet, so lower elevations may see some rain or mixed periods at times, while upper mountain conditions stay wintry with temperatures holding in the upper teens. The core of the storm arrives Monday night through Tuesday night with intense winds and denser snow.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.