The Aztecs called it Popocatépetl—”smoking mountain” in Nahuatl—and they weren’t being poetic. They were being literal.
When a Mountain Spends 500,000 Years Perfecting Its Temper Tantrums
Popocatépetl sits 43 miles southeast of Mexico City, close enough that its ash can drift into tacos on a bad day. This stratovolcano has been erupting for roughly half a million years, which means it was already ancient when humans first showed up to gawk at it. The current cone—the visible mountain we see today—is actually the third or fourth iteration, built on the corpses of earlier versions that collapsed spectacularly.
Here’s the thing: Popocatépetl doesn’t just erupt. It *performs*.
The most devastating eruption in recorded history happened sometime between 800 and 900 CE, during the late Classic period when various Mesoamerican civilizations were already on shaky ground. The volcano produced a Plinian eruption—named after Pliny the Elder, who died observing Mount Vesuvius—that sent pumice and ash across an area of more than 400,000 square kilometers. Archaeological evidence suggests entire settlements vanished under meters of volcanic debree. Some researchers think this eruption contributed to the collapse of Cholula as a major power center.
The Conquistadors Arrive and Popocatépetl Shows Off Like the Drama Queen It Is
When Hernán Cortés and his crew marched toward Tenochtitlan in 1519, Popocatépetl was actively erupting. Diego de Ordaz, one of Cortés’s captains, climbed to the crater rim to investigate—because apparently conquistadors had a death wish—and reported seeing flames and hearing tremendous roars. The Spaniards needed sulfur for gunpowder, so they actually harvested it from the crater during active eruptions. That’s either brilliant or suicidal, depending on your perspective.
The volcano stayed relatively active through the colonial period. Major eruptions occurred in 1539, 1571, 1592, 1642, 1663, 1697, and 1720. Each one terrified the inhabitants of Puebla and Mexico City, spawning religious processions and desperate prayers. The 1663 eruption was particularly nasty, producing pyroclastic flows that scorched everything within kilometers of the summit.
Then Popocatépetl went quiet.
Sixty-Seven Years of Silence That Made Everyone Forget How Dangerous It Actually Was
From 1927 to 1994, Popocatépetl barely whispered. Oh, it vented gases occasionally, and fumaroles steamed at the summit, but nothing dramatic. Nothing that would make international news or cause evacuations. During those decades, millions of people moved into the surrounding areas. Mexico City’s population exploded from about 1 million in 1930 to over 8 million by 1990. Puebla grew too. Towns crept up the volcano’s flanks.
Wait—maybe this wasn’t the best urban planning strategy?
On December 21, 1994, Popocatépetl woke up. A series of explosions sent ash 25,000 feet into the air. Seismometers recorded thousands of small earthquakes. Sulfur dioxide emissions skyrocketed. Scientists scrambled to install monitoring equipment they probably should have placed decades earlier. Turns out building cities next to a volcano with a 500,000-year track record of violent eruptions carries some risk.
The Modern Era When We Actually Started Paying Attention Because Cameras Exist Now
Since 1994, Popocatépetl has erupted more or less continuously, though with varying intensity. The December 2000 eruption forced the evacuation of 41,000 people and produced the largest explosive event since 1802. In 2012, the alert level hit Yellow Phase Three multiple times as ash columns reached 15,000 meters. The January 2013 eruption sent glowing rock fragments down the slopes at night—footage that went viral because, well, exploding mountains photograph beautifully.
The volcano’s current eruptive cycle includes frequent Vulcanian explosions, which are basically short, violent bursts that hurl blocks of solid lava and clouds of ash into the atmosphere. Between 2013 and 2019, CENAPRED (Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center) recorded more than 1,500 exhalations, explosions, and emissions. On May 19, 2023, Popocatépetl produced its most significant eruption in recent years, prompting authorities to raise the alert level and close the Mexico City airport temporarily.
Living With a Geological Time Bomb That Refuses to Commit to Either Exploding or Shutting Up
Approximately 25 million people live within 100 kilometers of Popocatépetl’s summit. That’s more than the entire population of Australia, just casually existing in the blast radius of an active stratovolcano. Modern monitoring systems track every seismic hiccup, every gas emission, every slight deformation of the mountain’s flanks using GPS and satellite radar. Scientists can now predict eruptions hours or days in advance—a vast improvement over “pray and hope for the best,” which was the previous strategy.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: Popocatépetl *will* produce another massive eruption eventually. Not if. When. The geologic record shows it happens every few centuries. The last truly catastrophic event was over 1,000 years ago, which means we’re arguably overdue. Or maybe not. Volcanoes operate on their own scheduale, indifferent to human anxiety.
Meanwhile, the mountain continues its daily routine: belching ash, glowing at night, reminding millions of people that they’ve chosen to live next to something fundamentally uncontrollable. It’s been smoking for half a million years. It’ll probably smoke for another half million, long after Mexico City is dust and the Aztec name is forgotten. Popocatépetl doesn’t care about our cities, our monitoring equipment, or our evacuation plans.
It just keeps smoking.
