La Palma eruption update 19th November 2021: The lava emission rate has increased

La Palma eruption – 19th November 2021

Daily summary

The increase in lava emission rate in the evening of the 18th has continued, making the lava flows faster and more fluid. However, there remains only three active fronts as in the past days, one to the south of the lava flow field that has flowed past Cogote Mountain, called flow 11, another front consisting of multiple streams feeding the lava delta (flows 1, 2 and 9), and finally a wide front between La Laguna Mountain and Todoque Mountain which is the most active flow (between flows 4 and 7). The rate of seismicity dropped again, especially at intermediate (10-15 km) depths. 51 events were recorded, with similar amounts at both intermediate and deep (30-45 km) depths, with the day’s largest earthquake being a mbLg 5.1 event at 36 km depth.

Volcanic tremor remains low, whilst a very local 4 cm inflation has been observed at the LP03 GPS station in Jedey closest to the eruption, although a small weakening regional deflation signal remains seen in the other stations. SO2 emissions remained high although slightly decreased relative to the 18th at 10,000-17,000 tons per day, whilst the ash and gas plume was again at 3,500 m. However, satellite measurements imply current SO2 emissions are lower than the start of the eruption. Air quality was again improved relative to the last few days, with SO2 levels reaching good or reasonably good in all stations on the island, except Tazacorte which exceeded the alert threshold (500 μg/m3) briefly in the early hours before returning to reasonably good levels. PM10 levels remained between good and reasonably good, with no stations exceeding the daily threshold (50 μg/m3).

(Above) Lava fountaining observed on the evening of the 19th from North of the main cone. The active lava flows can be seen flowing downstream to the right. Video credit: INVOLCAN

Sources: Government of the Canary Islands, PEVOLCA, Involcan, IGN, DSN, Cabildo La Palma, 112 Canarias, Tolouse VAAC, Copernicus EMS

Lava flows

Earthquakes

Exclusion zone map

Exclusion zones shown here have been approximated from press releases from the Cabildo de La Palma and will not be exact, nor claim to be official maps of the exclusion zones. For official information, please contact the Cabildo de La Palma.

Official social media

To see our full social media archive, visit our open data section or click here.

News articles

  • Air Quality News – An eruption of air pollution – here
  • Tenerife Weekly – Geothermal energy is an option to supply almost all the energy in La Palma – here

To see our full news archive, visit our open data section or click here.

Found a broken web link? We have archived all of our news articles on the WayBack Machine. You can view the pages by 1. pasting the broken link into WayBack Machine and clicking ‘Browse History’ 2. clicking on the latest capture date and then 3. clicking ‘view capture’. Please let us know of any broken web links by contacting us at enquiries@geotenerife.com.

Eruption footage

News and Interviews

Witness Testimonies

Interactive Lava Flow Map

Notes: Use the button in the top right to open the map into full screen mode. Use the legend icon in the top left to see the legend and further information about the map. Click on individual days to see an outline of the lava flows on that day.

Interactive Earthquake Map

click here to enlarge

Notes: The size of the points represents the size of the earthquake, and the colour represents the depth. The map will also only show a certain number of points at once. For ease of use, we recommend you uncheck all dates and the satellite basemap from the legend in the top right, and inspect the earthquakes one day at a time.

No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.