Volcanic lightning was caused by Mount Etna’s violent eruption, which sent bolts of lightning soaring through the sky above Italy’s eastern Sicily.
According to a volcano expert with Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, volcanic storms like these are rare, but they can happen after particularly violent eruptions or near marine volcanoes.
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Boris Behnke, a volcanologist, told The Associated Press that volcanic lightning was seen twice over Etna, once in 2021 and once in 2015.
The eruption, which happened just before midnight on Thursday, caused little harm. However, it blasted ash into the atmosphere to a height of 10 kilometres (almost 6 miles).
