volcano

Is the Eyjafjallajökull eruption over?

May 23, 2010

The volcanic eruption has been fairly low-key this past week, and according to reports from this morning it appears to have stopped altogether. At least for the time being. Reporter Ómar Ragnarsson flew over the crater this morning and told RÚV that there is no ash in the plume and it looks like the eruption [...]

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In which we brave the ash cloud, so you don’t have to

May 16, 2010

EPI and I headed out to take a look at the eruption last night. We left town around six, because a] AAH wanted to throw a belated birthday party and we needed to get the hell out of dodge, and b] because we hoped we might be able to see the eruption better if we [...]

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The beginning of the end?

April 20, 2010

So Kastljós this evening had a fascinating eyewitness report of their cameraman driving through the ash cloud and back again. It was an unusual sort of segment for Kastljós, more like a visual blog post – very personal. You can watch it here [at least for the next two weeks] — even if you don’t [...]

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Anatomy of a volcano III

April 20, 2010

Hey everyone, this just in from Mike Richards, our resident volcanologist: Hi folks, The latest on the eruption is that it seems to be settling down to a more ‘Icelandic’ style of eruption. The huge ash falls of the last few days are dwindling and most of the stuff coming out of the crater is [...]

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Latest update from Volcanoland

April 19, 2010

So I did not get off the rock this morning as intended, as both my flight to Copenhagen and the connecting flight to Brussels had been cancelled. Which is just fine — to be perfectly honest I would have been slightly nervous about flying even if it had gone ahead. Seriously, I prefer remaining here [...]

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Black Report, Eruption … we have the T-shirts!!

April 18, 2010

So, last week sure was a crazy week, huh? On Monday the eagerly-awaited Black Report was published to vast critical acclaim. Yet barely did we have the time to wrap our minds around the revelations in the report before Eyjafjallajökull started erupting and all of a sudden practically all of Europe was grounded! So the [...]

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The kids are all right

April 18, 2010

Well it’s been a beautiful day here in Reykjavík, clear and sunny and bright, if a little cold … and honestly, if I wasn’t following the news I would have NO idea that a volcano was erupting some 150 km east of here. Much less that all of Europe had been thrown into chaos because [...]

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With love from Aye-ya fyah-dla jow-kudl

April 16, 2010

Here’s a little video that has been making the rounds today and which I think is brilliant. I must say I’m quite impressed by some of the foreign pronunciations of Aye-ya fyah-dla jow-kudl [aka Eyjafjallajökull]. If anyone is interested, Eyjafjallajökull literally means “the glacier of the island mountains”. Eyja [island] fjalla [mountains'] jökull [glacier]. Meanwhile, [...]

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Anatomy of a volcano II

April 16, 2010

I’m going to take the liberty of bumping up another comment by Mike the geologist, posted in response to this post, explaining just what happens when a volcano erupts. Just a quick recap of technical terms which might help for anyone following the news. Magma is the name for all molten rock when it is [...]

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The face of the eruption

April 16, 2010

So the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajökull continues to wreak havoc. Whereas the eruption that began three weeks ago was a delightful little “tourist eruption”, this one is of a different ilk and much more serious. This picture was taken from an Icelandic Civil Defence plane yesterday and is pretty horrific. One can only hope that [...]

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