The Cabeza de vaca volcano, in Cumbre Vieja, once again increased its explosions and lava emissions during the afternoon of this Monday, as confirmed by sources from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) after several hours of relative inactivity.
These stops and returns to activity are common in this type of eruption, as explained by these sources.
The lava has picked up a lot of speed on its way to the sea in the last hour after an afternoon of relative inactivity, which makes it more likely that it will drain into Atlantic waters in the next few hours.
Furthermore, the channel seems to have widened.
The exit from the volcano's torpor has coincided with a drastic spike in seismicity, according to IGN data.
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La Palma volcano: the faces of tragedy
The advance of the lava through the Aridane Valley has engulfed, according to the latest available data, homes, roads and everything in its path, as shown by satellite images.
The outlook is bleak: more than 230 hectares razed and between 500 and 600 buildings destroyed.
This afternoon, the path of the lava had been slowed by the orography of the island of La Palma. This circumstance had reached the scientific committee of the Special Plan for Civil Protection and Attention to Emergencies due to Volcanic Risk (Pevolca) to doubt whether the lava could end up reaching the sea or not. "We don't know," declared its technical director, Miguel Ángel Morcuende. “If the conditions that were given at 8:00 pm on Sunday had continued, it would have already arrived without a doubt. But the volcano has times of growth and others of decay ”. Everything seems to indicate that these conditions reappear.
This increase in the velocity of the lava during the afternoon of Sunday forced to decree urgently, at midnight, the confinement of four population centers due to the danger of toxic gas emanations due to the interaction of magmatic material with seawater, given the possibility that the laundry reached the sea at dawn on Monday in the coastal area of Tazacorte, according to the emergency plan.
However, after a night of constant explosions, the emission of lava, smoke and ash ceased shortly after 8.30 (Canary time) on Monday. For just over two hours there was no sign, at the foot of the volcano, in the town of Tajuya that Cumbre Vieja was expelling magma. At 10.30 (local time), the broadcasts were appreciated again. These stops are common in this type of eruption, IGN sources reported, although they clarified that it is rare that they are so abrupt.
"We are facing a stage of apparent less strength," Rubén López, a volcanologist and spokesman for the IGN, had explained this afternoon in statements to Canary Television.
"It presents an irregular behavior, with different pulses," he said.
Regarding the possible causes of this apparent less activity, López clarified that “it is difficult to venture anything having such a hit population because we are talking about a process that happens miles underground.
There can be many causes and there is no need to trigger any kind of alarm ”.
The lava flow that destroys houses and crops, in any case, has not stopped at any time, despite the slowdown in the first hours of this Monday.
Pevolca estimates put more than 46.3 million cubic meters of pyroclastic material emitted by the volcano.