Warning Signs Came Too Late | Massive Magma Surge Beneath São Jorge, Portugal, La Palma-Sized !!

Indexed: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Imagine the size of 32,000 Olympic swimming pools filled with magma. 32,000 Olympic swimming pools. Let that sink in because that is what we're dealing with today. And that did rise and that's dangerous. It was rising up 20 kilometers 12.4 miles. So what am I talking about guys?

[00:00:34]This is a little bit scary. A volcanic island almost erupted. But the magma moved so quietly that the biggest warning came after it had already reached just one mile below the surface.

[00:00:51]We call this magma intrusion, but the pressure is there. Only one more mile to go until poof, shizzy's hitting the fizzy. Hi, volcano freaks. I have a good story for you. This is impressive. This is really impressive. A volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic almost erupted. But the scariest part is not that the magma was rising. The scariest part is that the magma moved so quietly that scientists now call it a stealthy intrusion. If you've seen my reports about Iceland, we did have some magma intrusions that were actually really, really damaging for the town of Brenndeavvic. An intrusion, magma's on the way out but stops before it erupts.

[00:01:40]But usually when the magma starts traveling, it creates earthquakes because it's like a minor that has to build a tunnel. But this time nothing. So this was very close to Shizzy hitting the fizzy as we like to say here in our group of earth freaks I have to say. So what is happening? This happened under Sao Horge Island in Portugal's um Azorus Aripilago.

[00:02:12]the Azorus Atsuren in German. Um, it's a chain of volcanic islands sitting far out in the Atlantic Ocean about 1,500 km or 930 miles west of mainland Portugal.

[00:02:29]So, we had an incident there before in March 2022. The island suddenly started shaking, started shaking with thousands of earthquakes. People feared that an eruption would be coming and authorities were watching very very closely. But then nothing happened. No lava, no ash column, no explosion. So for a while it kind of looked like the crisis had just faded away. But now scientists have reconstructed what was really happening underground.

[00:03:06]And the answer is disturbing.

[00:03:10]A massive sheet of magma had surged upwards for more than 20 kilometers and from more than 20 km deep or about 12.4 miles and it stopped only 1.6 kilometers or about a mile below the island. That is extremely shallow for magma. So that means molten rock came frightingly close to breaking through the surface and the volume I mentioned it huge.

[00:03:44]Researchers estimate there was enough magma involved to fill 32,000 Olympic sized swimming pools. So this was not a tiny little pulse of magma. This was a major underground movement that almost became an eruption. But why is this so different? And why am I mentioning this now? Because they just found out, right?

[00:04:08]Most people think rising magma always creates obvious warning signs. Ground shakes, cracks open, gas increases like we had in Glindavic in Iceland. Volcano becomes louder so to speak, louder before it erupts. But under Saorg much of the magma's upward movement happened with little very very little seismic activity. So in other words, the magma was already moving fast through the crust before the biggest earthquake swarm then got everyone's attention.

[00:04:45]Right? So that's why it's called stealthy. But it was not completely invisible, but it was quieter than expected for something this large and this shallow. And this is a very important event when it comes to volcanic eruption forecasting or to understand what volcanoes are doing.

[00:05:08]Because if magma can move from deep underground just to below one mile below the surface of an island without producing strong early warning signs.

[00:05:19]Then some volcanoes may be able to get dangerously close to eruption faster than people expect. I mean, the first monstrosity that comes to mind here is what about Camp Flee? What about the super volcano near Naples with more than 6 million people in the greater Naples area? And we're reporting about this quite often. People sit right on top of that volcano.

[00:05:44]What if the magma can come to the surface silently?

[00:05:48]And it can because the system there is already fractured enough, right? So now to understand why this happened here, we need to look at where Sao Horge is.

[00:06:01]Diazzors are not random islands in the Atlantic. You might already have guessed it if it has volcanic activity. They sit on one of the most complicated tectonic regions on Earth. So this is where the North American plate, the Eurasian plate, and the African plate interact.

[00:06:20]So three plates. So instead of just dealing with one simple plate boundary, the Azorus sits near a basically triple junction region where the plates are spreading, pulling apart and creating fractures in the oceanic crust.

[00:06:37]So of course that stretching allows magma from deeper in the earth to rise if it's stretched, right? Like a pizza dough, you stretch the pizza, it's getting thinner in the middle. So and this is how volcanic islands are built, right? layer by layer, intrusion by intrusion, eruption by eruption. So Sora itself is a long narrow volcanic island already and it's shaped partly by fissures and fault lines that are running through it. And one of the most important structures in this story is the Pico do carvo fault zone. That fault zone basically is the key. Scientists found out that the magma did not simply smash straight upwards like through thick solid rock that it would have to break. Instead, it used an existing fault system like a pathway. If there's cracks already, magma always is looking for the path of least resistance. So, think of the crust. It's cracked like a windshield if you have a crack in your car. So if pressure pushes upwards into perfectly solid glass, it has to break a new path. But if it crack if the crack already exists, uh pressure can move through those weak zones more easily.

[00:07:57]That is what appears to have happened beneath Sao Horge. Uh so the magma found the fault zone and pushed upwards through it. That explains why the ascent could be so fast and so quiet. And again, this scares me a little bit because there are studies in Campifle Gray. There is a crack already close to the surface like a straw that could that is close to the magma chamber and the surface. That's why wow this is an interesting find here. So it was using this pre-existing fracture network. But then the same fault system may also have helped to actually stop the eruption.

[00:08:38]And that's the twist here. The fault acted both basically a highway and a leak helped magma to rise, but it may also have allowed gases and fluids to escape sideways. So that matters because the gas pressure is one of the forces that basically helps drive drive the magma upwards to an eruption. So when gases stay trapped inside the magma, of course, the pressure builds way more. So that pressure then can help to push the magma towards the surface and actually fuel an eruption. But if gas and fluids escape into the surrounding cracks, the magma can lose some of that upward push.

[00:09:23]So the fault may have done two opposites things at the same time. It may have helped release the pressure and stall that magma intrusion before it erupted.

[00:09:34]So that's why scientists describe describe it right now as a failed eruption. The magma entered the shallow crust. The island lifted. Earthquakes shook the area, but the magma never broke through. We have satellite and GPS data that showed the surface of the island rose by about 6 cm 2.4 in. That may not sound like much, guys, but for an entire volcanic island, that is a serious signal. The ground does not rise for no reason. We know that if you watch my channel more often, guys, right? So, it means something was pushing up from below. If something's filling up from below, if you're blowing up a balloon, your surface rises. So in this case that something was a large sheet of magma forcing its way through the crust. And then came the earthquakes, thousands of them. But according to that new study that was just released, many of those earthquakes happened after after the magma had already stopped rising.

[00:10:44]That's why I said at the beginning there is no warning. That completely flips the normal expectation. The swarm was not necessarily the first warning that magma was beginning to move. It may have been the crust reacting when it's being stretched, then it's fracturing, right?

[00:11:04]Reacting after magma had already reached shallow depth and stalled. Had it not stalled. Had it become an eruption, they probably would have been like, "Whoa, what just happened? Where did that come from?" And that's a huge forecasting problem as you may understand right now because if the strongest earthquake swarm starts after the magma is already shallow then authorities may have much less time than expected if the next event is actually an eruption warning time evacuation time and that can be the case in many other volcanoes right so is not an empty island as well people live there there's towns roads farms, coastal communities, and steep volcanic terrain. So, a real eruption could have created several hazards. First, lava flows. Fissure eruption could send lava across parts of the island depending on like where a crack would open, like um Iceland style, right? Second, earthquakes. Even if there's no eruption, magma pushing through a fault system can trigger strong shaking. And the third is gas emissions. Volcanic gases can become very dangerous in low areas, right?

[00:12:20]Especially if emissions increase near populated zones. We're dealing with this at camp right now. But then also steep terrain, landslides.

[00:12:30]So Suroya has steep slopes and cliffs and strong shaking or volcanic deformation can absolutely destabilize terrain. But fifth, the ocean is a problem as well. On volcanic islands, eruptions near the coast or offshore can become even more explosive if magma interacts with seawater. So that does not mean any of this is happening right now. This 2022 event did not erupt, but it showed that the Allen's volcanic system is capable of moving a huge amount of magma very quickly and somewhat very unnoticeable.

[00:13:13]That is why this new study matters beyond just the Azors. It shows faults can control volcanic behavior in a ways that are not simple. A fault line is not always just an earthquake source. That's what we're learning here as well. If volcanoes are nearby, a fault can also become a more silent, dangerous magma pathway. It can open the door for magma to rise, but it can also drain pressure away and stop an eruption. So that means scientists cannot just ask, is magma moving? They also have to ask what kind of rock is it moving through? What's the geology? Is it forcing open new cracks?

[00:13:58]Is the fault sealed? Is the fault leaking gases and fluids? Those details guys can really decide whether unrest becomes an eruption or if it dies underground. So monitoring or new monitoring techniques, collecting a new kind of data matters so much. So how did they solve this? SA Hoya mystery. Um they have used land seismometers, ocean bottom sensors, GPS and satellite radar.

[00:14:26]They had to look at both like the shaking and the ground movement because even these earthquakes alone they also did not tell the full story. Right? If we have that ground inflation, it showed that magma had entered the shallow crust. The earthquake locations did give them a clue how the fault system responded and the combination of it of both of it has revealed the real picture. A huge intrusion, fast movement, shallow stalling and no eruption. So important is that next time such a huge amount of magma that is surging up may not stall again. So, I will watch that for you and uh remember all the other volcanoes that we're talking about. Could this happen somewhere else? Hint, Cample, for example. So, I have a few other videos for you in the end screen that are really, really interesting because there's a lot going on. So, I hope that I see you in a second in one of the videos that I have prepared for you here. Stay safe, guys. Bye-bye.