After millennia of silence, Ethiopia’s Hayli Gubbi volcano in the scorching Afar Depression erupted with ferocious intensity on Sunday morning, November 23, sending a colossal column of ash, gas, and molten fragments soaring 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) into the sky and blanketing the surrounding badlands in a choking veil of tephra. The event, the first confirmed eruption from the 1,118-meter (3,668-foot) shield volcano in at least 12,000 years