Mount Etna in Italy has erupted, pictured in these stunning photos

Mount Etna has been mostly quiet for two years, but after intensifying volcanic activity in recent weeks, things came to a head with the dramatic eruption you can see in the video above.

Europe’s tallest active volcano, Mount Etna, has erupted in spectacular fashion, filling the sky above Sicily with flame, lightning, and a enormous ash cloud. The eruption lasted less than an hour with no reports of injuries.

The paroxysmal event last night was among the most violent eruptive episodes of Etna during the past two decades; Voragine had two particularly intense paroxysms previously on 22 July 1998 and 4 Sep 1999, similar to the one last night.

However, yesterday the eruptions grew bigger and were large enough to be seen on the various webcams trained on Mount Etna. The job of these structures is to divert lava to safer places. The huge plume was created in the Voragine crater, which was formed in the volcano’s central crater in 1945. Etna has a basal circumference of 140 km and covers about 1,190 sq.km of area.

Residents in the Sicilian city of Messina and Reggio Calabria on mainland Italy, just over the Strait of Messina, woke up to find their cities covered in a fine dusting of ash. The smoke and ash generated due to the eruption reached an altitude of more than 10,000 feet above the summit and were visible from space.