Does a viral post of a white mushroom cloud authentically capture the June 2, 2025 eruption of Mt. Etna? No, that's not true: That image first circulated in 2015. Authentic photos of the 2025 eruption show clouds of a different shape and color, but no symmetrical white mushroom cloud.
The image appeared in a June 3, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the travl.wonders page under the title "Mount Etna has erupted 
".
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
Identical versions of the image, with the same foreground tree branch, appeared online as early as 2015, (archived here) according to the file-dating protocol on Imgur, an image-hosting site, shown below:
(Source: Imgur.com screenshot by Lead Stories.)
On the many websites and social media accounts posting their best images of the eruption, no white mushroom appeared in top search results for 2025, as shown below:
(Source: Google screenshot by Lead Stories.)
Searching Google specifically for "June 2025 Etna mushroom cloud" yielded no such photos, though it did show 2015 photos with discussion of the striking plume that year.
For more Lead Stories fact checks about volcanoes, readers can start here.
