Jet
11/10/21
Volcanic Eruption
La Palma is one of the Canary Islands, which are a group of volcanic islands off the coast of Africa. The Canary Islands, including La Palma and the other islands such as Tenerife and Gran Canaria formed over millions of years of volcanic eruptions!
A lot of the volcanoes on the canary islands are now dormant or extinct, but La Palma’s southern volcano called Cumbre Vieja is still an active volcano. It’s most recent eruptions were in 1949 and 1971. It then started erupting again on the 19th September and it’s still going!
Can you spot the island of La Palma?
Three weeks ago a crack opened on the volcano and red hot lava, ash and smoke burst out! Luckily as it is an active volcano it is monitored and scientists knew it was about to erupt so were able to warn the people living close to the volcano.
They knew this as seismic activity near the surface of the volcano had increased a lot. On the 11th September, just over a week before the volcano started erupting tremors began, which was a big clue that magma from deep inside the Earth was probably pushing up towards the surface.
10 days after the volcano began to erupt the lava flow reached the sea. You can see in the picture below that the volcano is quite close to the coast. The lava has created a delta in the sea, creating new land where there was once sea!
Just from the lights surrounding the volcano in the picture above you can see that many people live incredibly close to it. One of the reasons people live so close to a volcano is because the volcanic soil is very fertile and excellent for growing crops in. The farmers around the Cumbre Vieja volcano grow crops such as bananas, grapes and avocados.
The molten rock that erupts out of a volcano is so incredibly hot it is liquid and it flows a bit like a river. As the lava flows on the surface it very slowly cools and hardens into the black rock you can see in the pictures below.
As Cumbre Vieja has been erupting this lava has flowed across the land destroying everything in its path. In some places the flow of lava is 600m wide! Thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes and thousands of homes and other buildings have been totally destroyed by the lava.
Can you see where the lava flow is?
Over the last three weeks there have been also been lots of earthquakes on La Palma, which is common during volcanic eruptions. In all this time the volcano has not stopped erupting, releasing more and more lava, ash and even massive boulders the size of buildings. And it shows no sign yet of stopping…
Volcanic Eruption - Update...
25th December 2021
The volcanic eruption in La Palma has been officially declared to be over, three months after it first began. The last activity detected by scientists was on the 13th December so now they feel confident that the volcano will no longer erupt any further.
All photos and illustrations in this blog post are Whizzbots, Adobe Stock and Shutterstock Images.