Paul Reichert took part in a Volcano Discovery tour to Ethiopia in January 2017 and was lucky to witness a surge of magma overflowing the caldera during one of Erta Ale volcano’s most spectacular and intense eruptive phases in decades.

A surge of magma from depth (probably a small rifting episode) caused the lava lake in the southern pit crater of the caldera to overflow and build up a broad shield before collapsing, following the draining of the lake through a system of flank fissures 2-4 km downhill from January 21 – a day after Paul and his group had left. Credit: Paul Reichert / Volcano-Adventures via Storyful