Laacher See Eruption

The Laacher See eruption was a massive Plinian eruption in what is now the Eifel region of Germany, dated to about 13,006 years before present, roughly 11,000 BC. Rated a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6, comparable in scale to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, it expelled about 6 cubic kilometers of magma and 16 cubic kilometers of tephra from a column that may have reached 35 kilometers high, with pyroclastic flows covering valleys up to 10 kilometers away. Its ash fallout, identified across more than 300,000 square kilometers from central France to northern Italy and from southern Sweden to Poland, serves as a valuable dating marker for European archaeological sites, and the eruption may have contributed to the Younger Dryas cooling period that followed.