Italy's Mount Etna produced a spectacularly explosive eruption Monday morning, sending a ripple of reddish clouds down from its summit. The soaring ash rose to form a mushroom cloud high above Etna, Europe's highest active volcano , triggering a red alert for aviation crews in the region.

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology's Etna Observatory in Catania estimated the volcanic cloud's height at about 21,325 feet. The massive ash cloud was moving in a west-southwest direction, according to the agency, known as INGV.

The dramatic scene at Etna's southeast crater was caught on multiple webcams, spreading quickly across social media. As seen in a Weather Sicily webcam video , the eruption rapidly grew from a few lava flows to cascades of boiling ash and smoke that rose in

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