Saint Helens

Memories of Mount St. Helens on the 30th Anniversary (1980-2010): Part 2

eklemetti — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:30:07 +0000

Memories of Mount St. Helens on the 30th Anniversary (1980-2010): Part 2

Part 2 of your recollections of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

You can also check out an amazing set of satellite images spanning 1979-2010 at the NASA Earth Observatory. Great stuff!

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Eruption plume from Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Peter Carlton
My sister and I were playing in our backyard in West Seattle when we heard the boom. I was 6 years old. I remember lots of phone calls with our relatives in Yakima, watching footage on TV, and bitterly wishing that the wind had been blowing towards us so our school would close too.

Justin Stanchfield
I was eighteen and in my final week of high school when Mt. St Helens erupted. Of course we all had heard the news earlier in the day and seen some of the initial pictures, but living on a ranch in southwest Montana, not far from Butte, none of us expected to actually be impacted by the event. Late afternoon we were sorting cattle when a dull, blue-gray cloud filled the sky. The cattle, restless through most of the day, became oddly quiet, and still we told ourselves it was only a storm front and not volcanic ash we were seeing. By morning, the ground, our cars, the entire world it seemed, was covered by a thin gray film. Before the end of the day various emergencies had been declared and people were warned to stay in as much as possible, (which most of us ignored)

But, by far the biggest impact the eruption had on me personally, was the fact that graduation was delayed and I and my classmates had to wait an extra week to finish school!

Brian X
I was four when it happened, so I only remember that I did hear about it when it happened, but I have no direct memories.

My actual memory of it is a lot closer to my heart -- my grandfather had set me up just about then with a subscription to National Geographic which is still maintained to this day, and the NatGeo article on Mount St. Helens is probably my first memory of what actually happened. (Yes, I learned to read early.) To this day, I most vividly remember being struck by two things: Harry R. Truman refusing to leave his Spirit Lake Lodge, foolishly convinced that the mountain wouldn't kill him, and Reid Blackburn's death in the blast, and the subsequent discovery of his ash-covered car and the bizarre, dust-damaged photos of the eruption that were salvaged from his camera.

NatGeo just published a 30-year retrospective. It seems a strange thing to be sentimental about, but as horrific as it is, that article is one of my most cherished memories from my childhood. Oddly enough, a year or two after the NatGeo article, I received a volcano book from a family member as a gift that had a picture of Mount St. Helens before the blast. At the time I thought it had to be another mountain because the one in the book was cone-shaped and pristine, not horseshoe-shaped and wasted... it was a few years before I understood the concept of publishing date.

Tsu Dho Nimh
I was living in Mexico - a country with high volcano awareness - and the initial media reaction made it sound like the entire Pacific Northwest had been annihilated by something the size of Krakatoa. Pity there was no Internet, because being able to check with the USGS and volcano labs would have put the kibosh on many of the rumors.

One of my cousins lives in Montana, in the path of the ash cloud, and he said it moved in like a slow thunderstorm, but slightly gritty. The wheat harvest that fall was superb.

John M.
I was living in Everett, WA (30 miles north of Seattle, ~150 miles north of Mt. St. Helens). I was sleeping against the south wall of the house and awoke to what sounded like two sonic booms. Once we learned what was going on, my girlfriend and I drove and hiked to the summit of Mt. Pilchuck from which we had a pretty good view of the plume. The second big eruption a month or two later was much more spectacular from the Seattle area (the plume rose a lot higher as I recall).

Mount St. Helens with the new crater on May 19, 1980. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Monika
I've been learning English at the time of the eruption that I could only see on TV. But for helping my English I had a subscription on NatGeo magazine with the help of a friend living in Canada (from Hungary it was impossible to subscribe in those years) so I met the eruption in the magazine with the big article. (You can find it in the archives.

Nick Carter
I was living in Richland, WA and except for the fact we had a 10 month old daughter would never have been up that early on a Sunday morning. We were futzing around in the kitchen, making breakfast, and I was looking out the East-facing window trying to decide if I needed to mow the lawn before our afternoon visitors arrived. There was a "Boom!" that I attributed to being a sonic boom, which are quite common in this high-desert area of Eastern Washington.

Some hours later I was out mowing our large lawn with an unpowered mower - my youthful bow to the need for hard physical exercise. I was finished with all but the front yard when I noticed ominous looking clouds coming from the West. It had been a beautiful, sunny, warm day, so I assumed we were in for a major thunderstorm and started running while mowing. A neighbor family came out on their porch and the man asked why I was working so hard on a Sunday. I replied that I wanted to finish before it started raining and he laughed and told me it was the ash cloud from Mount St. Helens.

Later, as the plume was directly overhead, I took some great pictures of the billowing cloud. We had between a sixteenth and an eighth inch of ash, and I collected some. It became quite gloomy that day, with the ash cloud overhead, and I seem to recall an abnormal quietness: e.g. no birds chirping, very little of the normal traffic.

Monday at work people had great stories: The friends who had been climbing Mt. Adams and were starting down the other side by the time of the eruptions so had missed it; a co-worker's daughter who was driving between home and Pullman (Washington State University) in an area that received a lot of ash who pulled over to the side of the road and started crying inconsolably - she thought there had been a nuclear war.

For years afterward, on frequent trips between Richland and Seattle, 200 miles away, one could pick out places along the road where significant deposits of ash had fallen.

The plinian column of the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Rodger Wilson
First, I thank God for my parents who nurtured my interest in volcanoes since an early age, six to be exact! There wasn't a volcanic area in the American west that we didn't visit at least once before I turned into a terrible teen (...weekend and summer camping trips that my younger sister, who was definitely not into volcanoes, quietly
endured!,...Thank you Cindy!). At that age, just knowing that the white peaks on the western skyline were volcanoes was enough, but when Crandall and Mullineaux's (USGS) hazard study on Rainier was issued in 1967, in which the authors stated that, "Mount Rainier has erupted as recently as 150 years ago, and will certainly erupt again.", my young imagination became completely transfixed with the idea that I might someday witness a Cascade eruption (...imagine!,...right out my back
window!!!!...)!

I am not sure if it was the power of suggestion, that people became more aware of the mountain's past, or the unrest was real but, beginning a few years later (late 1960s-early 1970s), reports of steam explosions, unusual glacial melt pits, clouds and rockfalls from the peak became frequent, adding some weight to Crandall and Mullineaux's statement as well as continuing to feed my curiousity about volcanoes.

Four years later (I was starting to get a feel for geologic time by then!), Mount Baker provided another boost to my volcano education by becoming "my first active volcano". Having to watch it slowly return to slumber over the next five years was tempered by the release of another Crandall/Mullineaux joint entitled, "Potential hazards from future eruptions of Mount Saint Helens, Washington.". I think everyone's familiar with their "...perhaps by the end of this century." statement in the bulletin.

Well,...guess where my family spent every one of my birthdays after issuance of USGS Bulletin 1383-C (actually, we started camping at MSH after Crandell and Mullineaux's preliminary findings were published in Science magazine in 1975). The upper Toutle River valley was amazing!

You could observe layer after layer of young lahar, pyroclastic flow and airfall deposits by just walking along the fresh-cut river banks. I still have samples of andesite and dacite I collected during those trips. More amazing was the size and density of Douglas fir, Western red cedar trees, the lush growth overall in the upper valley was something I'll never forget. Visiting those areas after 18 May 1980 is
what (for me) caused the immensity of what happened to really sink-in.

I remember reading about the 4.1 earthquake in the newspaper the day after it happened, on Friday 22 March 1980. Mount Saint Helens was a frequent producer of earthquakes and, more often than not, if an earthquake in the state was reported felt, it occurred in SW Washington, "near Mount Saint Helens". But, this earthquake was a little stronger than most, so my imagination ran wild over the weekend with thoughts of it being the first in a series of tremors that would signal eruptive activity at the volcano (little did I know that another M4 quake occurred Saturday evening and by late Sunday night,...the precursory sequence was in full swing!).

Imagine my elation upon reading the headline (not page 5D or some other niche reserved for volcano stories in those days!) stating "scientists concerned that Mount Saint Helens might be waking-up."! As I said before, MSH frequently experienced earthquakes, but not swarms,...so, in my mind, there was no doubt about what was happening beneath the volcano,...and with Dwight Crandall's and Donal
Mullineaux's volcano track record,...what would happen!

Seismicity at the volcano was reported to have eased dramatically by Tuesday, 25 March, but Mullineaux was quick to point out that this wasn't necessarily a "good" sign. He noted that eruptions elsewhere had sometimes followed marked
declines in swarm seismicity. Right again! I was in the front parking lot of
Eisenhower Senior High School on 27 March at 12:30 p.m. when a loud sonic boom-like detonation came out of the west! My suspicions were confirmed by radio announcements about a half an hour that MSH had indeed erupted for the first time in 123 years.

From the following weekend through 10 May 1980, I was parked either at the Camp Baker roadblock (Toutle River) or as far up the Cispus River Road (east side,...near Bear Meadow) as weather (not the volcano mind you!) would allow. I felt perfectly safe at both locations and believed I could easily "escape" if anything untoward happened. Yeah,...right!!!

Since I had spent all my money on weekend trips to the volcano from March 29th, through May 10th, without seeing much more than a few quick glimpses of the cone through a sloppy mixture of rain and snow (on the west side), slogging up a ridge through melting snow to gather a Mason jar of ash (on the east side), I stayed home on the weekend of May 18th.

On the morning of the 18th, I was laying-in, my mother and father were in the living room with their ritual cups of coffee and Sunday paper in hand when,...Ba-Boom! My dad immediately (jokingly!) responded with, "Mount Saint Helens just erupted!". Looking back on it now,...he was taunting me! Anyhow,...after another half hour (9 am), we started hearing these long, rolling peals of thunder. Problem is,...this was May (kinda early for a thunderstorm in Central Washington) and the storm seemed to be coming from the west (here, thunderstorms typically approach from the south to southeast)! My father and I walked out our back patio which faces west to have a
look. All that was visible to the west was a dark haze, no mushroom cloud or anything suggesting something volcanic, but a soon an unusually high cirrus layer pushed rapidly eastward over us (I had no weather training at that time but I knew it was quite high in the atmosphere) At about the same time, the lower level haze was upon us and shortly thereafter the street lamps began to activate (not unusual
during a good thunderstorm). But soon, we began to hear something more unsettling, a light tick, tick, tick on the leaves of plants in my mothers garden. At first we thought wow!, static electricity, we need to go inside, but upon entering the house I got an idea about what else could produce that ticking sound! I ran out the front door and nearly slipped as I stepped out (in my bare feet) on the front sidewalk. I put my hand down flush with the sidewalk. When I brought it back up to
examine, it looked as though I had talcum powder or baking flour covering my palm! I was beyond ecstatic!!!

From that point (maybe 930 am) things began to happen at a much more rapid pace. The cloud shut down the eastern horizon, things went black,...and the thunder! The thunder was like I've never experience ever since! I attended Naval forecasting school in Mississippi and witnessed (daily) thunderstorms as well as two hurricanes,...not even close! The thunder on 18 May 1980 was incessant and so loud as to just come short of shattering windows (I'm not exaggerating!)! You could not see the lightning whatsoever but the thunder!!!! Visible mixed in with the sparkling ashfall (under the streetlights), were occasional spiral-shaped fibres of wood (as you see around campfires!) and pinecone scales! Imagine almost eight hours of that!,...in total darkness, with sand falling from the sky throughout! A volcanologist's dream come true!!! My mom's nerves and many others I'm sure were frazzled but I absorbed every second of it through the distinct 5:30 pm
sign-off blast (another sonic-boom-like double detonation!). Things quieted rapidly afterward. The next morning, we awoke to total silence,...not a bird, bug or other sound of anything living. Outdoors smelled like wet cement mixed with a slight hint of fir tree,...no sulphur smell whatsoever. In marked contrast to the day before,...eerily quiet.

I want to point out that,...yes I realize lives were lost and other lives were changed that day, maybe not for the better but,...that's what volcanoes do! That's why I study them intensely. I like to think that from each eruption studied, we glean something out that might limit future eruptions to perhaps being destructive but not deadly.

Ash on cars in Vancouver, Washington on May 25, 1980. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Alison A.
My husband and I traveled to Tacoma, WA with our two small girls for a day's outing with friends and a barbecue: we arrived very early in the day, and as we were getting out of the infamous road cruiser known as a Pontiac station
wagon, we heard an explosive sort of sound which seemed to reverberate past
us very quickly. I said, "That's odd, wonder what that was." The next
guest arriving had been listening to their car radio, and we all clustered
around the host's tiny TV set, watching the footage of the ash cloud. We
packed up the girls, and headed for home in North Seattle. The plume headed
east, fortunately for us, but the stories from residents of Moses Lake,
Ephrata, Walla Walla and all the 'villes between are of a day turned to
night, and ash. Lots of ash.

Mike
Shortly after the May 18 1980 eruption my Dad hired a light plane and we flew over the devastated area. I remember being shocked at what I saw. Mountainside after mountainside of toppled trees all pointing away from the volcano. Vehicles crushed by the falling trees with bodies still inside. I love volcanoes but this was the stuff of nightmares. I could say more but I'm leaving for Costa Rica in a few hours.

Vern Hodgson
It was quite the event, I happened to have a camera pointed at the mountain when it erupted and captured sixteen dramatic photos of about sixty seconds of the event, then it was time to get out of Dodge, had I known what I know now I would have stayed there and enjoyed the whole experience.

Smitha
Can we post even if we weren't alive for the eruption? I know it sounds odd, but as a 3rd-grader in 1990, I discovered Patricia Lauber's children's book on Mount St. Helens in our school library...and I was transfixed and enraptured instantly. How her words and the photographs described what happened completely blew my 8-year-old mind--I had never seen or come across anything like it before. I lost count of how many times I reread that book.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens singlehandedly started my lifelong love for and fascination with volcanoes and geology. I'm now 28, and while I did not go on to become a geologist, I very seriously considered it, and sometimes I really regret not going down that path. I lived in Japan for two years and spent most of my vacation days traveling around the country to visit various volcanic sites. I do study geology on the side for fun.

My plans to visit MSH for the eruption's 30th anniversary have just narrowly fallen through and I am heartbroken--what an incredible pilgrimage (and indeed, that is how I would describe a visit to MSH and the Cascades) it would have been.

Minda
On the date of Mt St Helens' eruption I was a police/fire dispatcher for Benton County, Washington- the Tri-Cities. We had been on alert for the eruption for a long time, and knew we were in Condition Red. It was a quiet morning, and my day off- but I was up early as I had a weeklong seminar beginning Monday in Portland.

I not only heard a very long C-R-A-C-K, but I felt it too. I knew it wasn't a sonic boom as it disappeared too quickly. I was considering calling dispatch, but we had been receiving hundreds of phone calls whenever the public got nervous, so I decided to continue dressing. No need to add to the problems my co-workers must be experiencing. There was no TV or radio on (I really was enjoying the quiet), and when I walked out into my kitchen, which faces west, I could not believe the dark sky coming in. It was filled with "boiling" clouds.

I woke my oldest son and asked him to please mow the yard as we were about to have a terrible storm, and he had promised to have it mowed before I left. In a couple of minutes he came back inside to tell me that there was something in the air which was making his skin burn.... It was the acidic ash!!!!

My youngest son was on a scouting campout at the Potholes, and he would not be seen again for four days! I left for Portland as scheduled, and amazingly, there was no ash on the Oregon side of the Columbia River! We stopped in Hood River where we could get a good look at St Helens.

Amazing, but we still have pockets of ash in our gardens to this day, 30 years later!

Joan-Marie
I have two strong memories relating to MtStH. When MSH blew I was in High School and entranced by rocks and geology, especially volcanoes. To my lasting distress my parents just didn't see a good reason to hop in the camper and drive N. from Southern California to see what was happening up close. Although, it was not for lack of effort on my part.

However, they did decide to head North for our summer vacation. When we got into the zone in Washington, I was excited to see all the ash and the rivers. But what I really remember with glee is that everywhere we stopped near the eruption on I5 people were selling ash, and things made from ask. My mom, being the practical woman that she is, decided it was much cheaper to get our own baggy out and collect our own ash. So we did, from the same place where they were selling it. As I sit and type this I have a wonderfully Kitsch figurine sitting on my computer from MSH ash that same mom brought me from one of her more recent trips.

David Tucker
On the morning of May 18th, 1980, I was aboard my live-aboard sailboat in Bellingham, Washington, which is 170 miles (270 km) north of Mount Saint Helens. I heard three distinct loud booms. I thought someone's propane tanks were blowing up aboard another boat, or maybe a chain of them. I walked up the dock, looking for a plume of smoke, but saw nothing. A friend later came down the docks, telling everyone he saw that the volcano had blown up. Friends in Seattle did not hear any sounds from the eruption. My mother, in Tacoma, Washington, had a view of the very summit portion of Mount Saint Helens from her upstairs window, as well as Rainier. After the eruption and collapse, she could no longer see Saint Helens, which really pissed her off. After I returned to University to get a Masters in Geology, studying volcanism, she never passed up any opportunity to complain about the impact on her view. Rainier wasn't enough for her, I guess.

Robin
It was my 4th birthday and we were visiting family in Keremeos, BC, just north of the WA border. I clearly remember ash falling from the sky, and my Mom picking ash off the cake. Strangely enough, my Uncle in Clinton, BC, (WAY north of the border) heard the explosion, but we were relatively close and didn't hear anything.

When I was 6 I saw a documentary at school about MSH and how Harry Truman wouldn't leave his lodge, and his sister dropped a wreath for him from a chopper. For years after I was terrified of volcanoes, and couldn't sleep facing my bedroom window - I was convinced that a volcano was going to grow up through our fields!

I too have a piece of MSH glass, blown into an egg shape. It looks like the mountain is erupting inside it.

My husband and I finally made the trip to MSH in August 2008, enduring 40C temps and gale force winds blowing pumice to see the incredible mountain that I've felt such a connection to all these years. She was even more beautiful than I imagined. Huge, magnificent and terrifying.

Krissy
I was 9 when Mt St Helens erupted on May 18th 1980. We lived very close to the Mountain, on the South side. (Battle Ground, WA) I remember hiking on the Mountain and going to Spirit Lake before the eruption. May 18th I was at church with my family, as we were walking out of church we noticed the mountain erupting and the sky filled with billowing clouds. I do not remember anyone being afraid. Everyone just stared at the Mountain and the sky. We did not hear a sound or get any ash! Thankfully the blast went North which is mostly National Forest because the South side of the Mountain is very populated.

I just went to Mt St Helens again 2 Years ago and hiked up it with my children. It is SO Amazing!! Everything is growing back and it is just so so beautiful. The Mountain was steaming when we were on it, but seemed normal to me. Alot of people think it sounds scary to go there even now, but it is one of the most beautiful places ever!

Mike M.
In the Spring of 1980 I was an undergrad at the University of Washington (studying geology), and when the volcano started to wake up it was certainly a topic of much conversation in classes. I spent nearly each weekend from the initial pop to the eventual, catastrophic lateral blast at the mountain in one capacity or another. Sometimes it was just volcano-geeks watching from where we could, but we did have a few weekends in an official capacity assisting the USGS, which was definitely undermanned for something of this scale, way back then. My family and friends were used to me being gone from Friday afternoon to Sunday night - they knew where I was!

On the Saturday night before the big blast, I was on the south side of the mountain near the town of Cougar - it had just become too dangerous for non-USGS employees to be on the north side with the ominous bulge getting bigger every day. Each weekend as it grew, you could sense a growing fear in the USGS team. At 8:30PM (without having told most friends and any of my family), I left with a friend to drive across the mountains to Eastern Washington to go river rafting on the Wenatchee River. We got into the campsite our friends had reserved some time well after midnight and hit the sack.

The next morning, for some unknown reason, I looked at my watch as I awoke. It was 8:32 AM. We packed up the camp, and headed down into town where our raft was scheduled to start at 11 AM. It was a very warm morning, and we expected it to be quite hot by the time we were to have finished up at 4PM or so. We pushed off on time, and were about an hour into the trip when from the south, it looked like a tremendous thunderstorm was coming over us. The Wenatchee River is in a low canyon at this point and we were not able to see much beyond the mountains that lined the river's course. As the thunderstorm overtook us, it became obvious that this was something completely different. The air smelled of sulfur, and fine ash began to fall - and yet, I did not put 2 and 2 together, because we were some 150 miles north-northeast of the mountain I had stood upon 24 hours earlier. There could be no way that any ash cloud could make it that far!

Some ways down the river, a fisherman on the bank told us that the mountain had exploded, and that everything was being shut down. It was almost completely dark by the time that we got to the river pullout where our cars were parked. We were dirty and grimy from ashfall mixed with riverspray. By then, the roads were all closed, and the phones were all down, and I was not able to contact my family until the late next day (they were sure that I was dead since they hadn't heard from me). I wasn't able to get home until the Tuesday night after it happened.

It may have been 30 years ago, but in some ways, it seems just like yesterday!

Maggie
I was 20.

I'm Canadian and we used to go to Kalispell, Montana for "Canada Days" every year on the May long weekend (big party for all university age people!)

We awoke in the morning to tents covered in ash - it was snowing! Cars were stalled, everything had a blanket of ash on it. It cut short the weekend but it was totally cool driving back to Alberta and watching the ash slowly peter out as we got closer to home.

I became an earth scientist and I teach physical geography and geomorph... coincidence? Perhaps not... maybe it influenced me! All I know is that when the mountain threatened to go again a few years ago my husband and I quickly hauled out a map to see how long it would take to get down there (alas, too long and too far to be told we had to stay 14 miles away at the perimeter they had set up...)

Mount St. Helens erupting in May 1980.

Dana H.
I was five years old when Mount St. Helens erupted. I'd thought until then volcanoes didn't erupt anymore, so it was a bit of a shock to see it explode on the news. Something in my young mind clicked instantly with the volcano. It looked like it hurt, so I drew it a get-well card. Such is the mindset of small children. My neighbors visited soon afterward, bearing a vial of ash. Exotic stuff for an Arizona girl.

A few years later, one of my favorite children's book authors, Marian T. Place, wrote a book called Mount St. Helens: A Sleeping Volcano Awakes. I got to know people like geologist David Johnston, who died on Coldwater Ridge. His last words, picked up by a ham radio operator, still give me shivers: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" And then he was gone. Powerful stuff, especially when you live in volcano country.

In 2007, I stood on Coldwater Ridge and gazed into St. Helens's caldera, remembering David Johnston. I'd expected to be afraid, but I felt no fear, just excitement, awe and a profound gratitude that geologists like David risk and sometimes give their lives so that we can understand the behavior of volcanoes. Anyone who thinks volcano monitoring isn't important just needs to visit the monument to the dead. It would have been a far larger monument without those geologists keeping watch.

Because of Mount St. Helens and the geologists who study her, I could better understand my own backyard volcano, the San Francisco Peaks. The geological jury is still out on whether the enormous gouge in its profile was caused by glaciers or a lateral eruption like St. Helens'. I know what side I come down on. When I stood in a meadow created by a lahar from the Peaks and looked into that gulf, I froze: it looked almost precisely like St. Helens, only bigger.

Mount St. Helens was my first introduction to the immense power and stark beauty of volcanic eruptions. She'll be with me for the rest of my life.

Garry Hayes
I was graduating from Pomona College on the very morning the volcano collapsed and exploded. We've referred to our graduating class as the St. Helenians to this day. They sent out oven mitts(!) with a St. Helens motif for our 30th class anniversary. I am thinking (possibly in the apocryphal sense) that the daughter of one of the Cascade Volcano Observatory geologists was graduating with the same class, so he was in the audience at Pomona instead of being in Washington seeing it happen. I wanted to go see the volcano so badly, and it was about 18 years before I got up there to see it in person, but I've been there 5 or 6 times since.

John Fleck
I was a college student in Walla Walla, Wash., and was working the night shift on a local commercial radio station.

We'd been watching news stories on the volcano for weeks. But this was not the age of 24-7 news, so we didn't realize it had erupted that day until we were standing in our front yard looking at the mammoth storm clouds moving in from the west. They weren't storm clouds, our neighbor came over and explained.

The radio was a computer-run adult contemporary music station, so normally my job was just to change the tapes and do the occasional local news update. But I shifted into news mode that night, and kept the station on the air after midnight to keep offering news updates to our listeners. It's probably a stretch to say that's the moment I got the news bug, but it's one of them, and it turned into a career for me.

Oh, and Walla Walla was in a sort of hole in the weather pattern, and saw very little ash fall.

Brian Owens
I grew up in Anacortes, WA, about 75 miles north of Seattle. I remember the initial report on the news around March 24th or so, saying that there had been a lot of earthquakes at St. Helens, and that it might erupt. We had all been excited by increased steaming at Mt. Baker a few years earlier, but that did not amount to anything.

After the first eruption on the 27th, it became topic #1 in the northwest. I remember seeing interviews with David Johnston, who seemed really excited to be a part of it, and enjoyed educating the public about what might happen. Looking back, I think it was good to have someone like him who did such a nice job of educating the public in a way that we could understand.

I remember a lot of speculation over the next 2 months. KING TV in Seattle had a young meteorologist/science reporter by the name of Jeff Renner, who they stationed near the mountain in a trailer, and he gave frequent live reports, sometimes accompanied by an earthquake. Today Renner is a Seattle institution, and is the chief meteorologist at KING TV. Many people thought that nothing big would happen, and they were frustrated that the "red zone" around the mountain was as big as it was (too small, as it turned out).

I remember there was speculation that the "new moon" or perhaps it was a "full moon" on May 21st could be enough to trigger the eruption. On the morning of the 18th, I was lying in bed, awake, a little before 9AM when I heard several very loud, rumbling "BOOM!!!"s. My mom thought that my dad had fallen against our large windows from our deck, since it did shake the house and windows. My dad thought they were blasting logs across the water on Whidbey Island. I thought that Mt. St. Helens had erupted, and ran to the tv and radio, constantly looking and listening for any word. No internet back then, and it took a little while. The first report was about 15 minutes later, saying "Something is happening at Mt. St. Helens". We had to go to Seattle that day to the UW for a function for my sister, and it seemed that people in Seattle did not hear the eruption, even though they were a lot closer to us. I later heard that the sound of the eruption went on an upward angle, bounced off the upper atmosphere, and back down again, skipping over areas closer. In fact, I think people very near the mountain heard little at all.

Passerby
I was living in Tennessee, a twenty-something attending classes as a chemistry and math major undergraduate. Mt St Helen's ash had given the Deep South a cooler than normal summer and fall in 1981.

The ash cloud left its calling card in a most unusual winter that year. Come January 1982, the Tennessee Valley and much of the Deep South would feel the impact of the worst ice storm in many decades, accompanied by near record frigid temperatures and in some areas, snow as well. The accumulated 5 inches of ice insulated by snow, would persist to paralyze our area for nearly a month from a deceptive storm that hit January 19th, a day that had been forecast for warm conditions (50 degrees) and gentle rain.

The cold that came in on the heels of that rain that night formed a thick ice sheath that caused large power outages as transmission lines sagged and snapped, rendered roads nearly impassible due to a lack of snow removal equipment, and brought governments, businesses, and public school and universities to a grinding halt from forced absenteeism.

Since this storm crept in unannounced, the local grocery stores were not immediately stripped bare of necessitities, as was usually the case when inclement weather struck.

The piney woods where I lived developed a peculiar flat-topped profile that would persist for years, as high winds that accompanied the ice storm snapped off frozen tree tops, reducing the pine barren ecosystems to a uniform height for many miles.

Main roads were reduced to primitive deep-rutted tracks. In New Orleans, fabled slow-growing and tall century old Royal Palms that lined stately main thoroughfares in the oldest part of the city died en masse, and were reported to be irreplaceable.

Cars on secondary roads remained stuck fast for as long as two weeks, as motorists trekked resolutely to work in-town, or to makeshift bus stops in rural locations, waiting to be picked up twice each day by the only public transportation equipped with tire chains that were an absolute necessity for the hilly region - the Grey Hound Bus line.

It was a memorable winter, one of two unusually cold seasons to occur in just a few years, thanks to Mt St Helens and later, El Chichon.

Mount St. Helens, moments after the landslide that triggered the May 18, 1980 eruption.

Connie
It was a beautiful Sunday morning. I was standing at Waterfront Park in Portland along the Willamette River and could see Mt. St. Helens erupt. It looked like an atom bomb but it wasn't. It was surreal.

On another day, I saw it erupt while standing on Broadway in front of Nordstroms. By then, it seemed like a normal occurance.

The strangest part was the ash. We all wore face masks so we didn't breath in the ash (glass particles) and used water to wash off the ash from the car windows so the ash did not scratch the glass.

One Thursday night, I left work and drove home in falling ash that was like snow. I could not see 15 feet ahead of my car lights. Very odd.

Helena
I was ~7 years old when Mt. St. Helens erupted, so, despite growing up in Tacoma, WA, I wasn't at St. Helens until about 1990. My first memory of Mt. St. Helens (and one of my earliest memories) is a hazy one of Spirit Lake, still covered with downed trees and ash. After that time, we didn't go there for many years. During that time, however, my mother wrote a story about our trip - or, rather, the trip our teddy bears snuck from our car to take around the devastation zone. It was a childhood favorite.

My father was working as a photographer at the time, and his boss tried to convince him to join a trip into the evacuated zone on May 18th. My dad wasn't really keen on the idea, and backed out - luckily for me and my siblings, who were all born afterward!

eklemetti Tue, 05/18/2010 - 11:30

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Monday Musings: Iceland update, St. Helens anniversary, earthquakes at Hood and Mikeno erupts(?)

eklemetti — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:34:40 +0000

Monday Musings: Iceland update, St. Helens anniversary, earthquakes at Hood and Mikeno erupts(?)

Some news for a sleepy Monday:

Mt. Hood in Oregon.

The ash from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is, once again, causing significant airspace closure over northern Europe - close of 1,000 flights today. However, much of the closures are fairly short-lived, but that isn't keeping people happy. The eruption hasn't actually changed much, just that the winds are bringing ash towards Europe. The ash for the next few days will likely effect the England, Scotland, Ireland, Netherlands, France and possibly other parts of northern Europe (along with airspace over Greenland and the north Atlantic). The ash plume is reaching upwards of 7-9 km (24,000 - 30,000 feet) with significant lightning in the plume (over 150 strikes/day). You can check out an amazing video of the eruption - up close and personal.
There is a brief report of a eruption and avalanche at Mikeno in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mikeno doesn't even muster a description in the Global Volcanism Program database, so not much is known about the volcano beyond its location 45 km north of the city of Goma - and the large population of mountain gorillas on its flanks. The unconfirmed eruption at Mikeno has reportedly left 36 people missing after the avalanche.
Remember, tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens - and if you haven't already checked out the eruption memories of Eruptions readers, you should! There is a lot of articles marking the anniversary about the eruption, the volcano and the recovery.
And while all this is happening marking the 1980 eruption of St. Helens, there is a report of a small earthquake swarm at St. Helens' neighbor, Mt. Hood. In fact, the USGS reports that a series of small earthquake swarms have been occurring at the Oregon volcano for the past month. These swarms are relatively common, but are still worth watching. Hood's last confirmed eruption was in 1865-6, possibly as recently as 1906.

eklemetti Mon, 05/17/2010 - 05:34

Looks like the weather is to be good for a few hours this evening but then it turns nasty until friday so get your webcam fix in now.

Indeed a huge dark ash plume is visible on the HvolsvÃ¶llur webcam:
eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-hvolsvelli/

Not looking forward to an eruption of Mt. Hood. I know it will happen someday, but when it does I hope it is small, interesting and brief :)

I was at a weekend wedding on Mt. Hood a couple of years ago when a 3.5 earthquake startled us all in our beds early in the morning. We jokingly talked about it being a bad omen for the marriage. Unfortunately, we were right...

In fact Boris, youÂ´ll see the plume better from Mulakot cam, when itÂ´s not overexposed, that is ;)

http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg

Good evening! I wonder why stratovolcanoes in Iceland don't show the classical cone shape, like Fuji, Osorno or Mayon. Is it because they're mostly under glaciers? Etna is another example; why? Because of so many fissures growing into scoria cones on its slopes?

5) Correct, most are buried under glaciers. Also the Mid-Atlantic rift runs through Iceland. I believe the island nation is gradually splitting apart, so the volcanoes are very productive lava/magma producers, plus the fissure systems are different than the typical stratovolcano, having long and large fissures and calderas.

Eyja is playing hide and seek
sometimes I can sneak a peak
behind the clouds and see a streak
of heavy ash clouds like a beak...

of a bird, or a trunk of an elephant or a shoe
imagination makes it true!

#6 Thank you Robert!

To Boris: I read somewhere (I think in a French newspaper) that you would need 3 weeks, in the best of cases, in order to evacuate the 600.000 people threatened by Vesuvius, if it was to undergo explosive activity. Is it true? How are the emergency plans in Napoli? I was there last year, and thought it was quite a nightmare regarding traffic; I dare not imagine what it would be like in case of re-awakening of the Vesuvius or the Campi Flegrei...

Update on Activity IMO 17th May 2010 18.05

The height (a.s.l.) of the eruption plume is about 6-7 km according to radar, occasionally pulsating to 9 km (27,000 ft). Winds around the volcano are slightly increasing, resulting in lower plume height. The plume is drifting east and is dark-gray.

Ash has fallen in the GnÃºpverjahreppur area, on the road to Sultartangi power station and in the Biskupstungur area (very fine particled and gray). The eruption site has not been visible today. Constant lightning has been detected, up to 10 flashes per hour. The ash plume rises straight up from the site.

The volcanic activity is explosive, but there are indications that it has somewhat lessened since the maximum on 13 May. Considerable ashfall is in the nighbouring communities and is expected to continue. Fluctuations in the strength of the eruption and in ashfall can still be expected.

Details in status report issued collectively by the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Institute of Earth Sciences at 17:00.

there may be trouble ahead, but whiles there,s "moon-light" love and romance, lets face the music and dance.

I was tempted to click on this banner link:

http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2010/05/introducing_the_science_scou…

I'm glad I did, because the Science Scout Badges have a very high BTSSB rating, IMAO. (BTSSB = Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.) And here is a nice TBUSLA (Totally Brewed-Up Six-Letter Acronym) in the post as well. Definitely a gem.

Just a bit of news from another volcano that is erupting, though not with such exuberance as Eyjaf. The web cam that was placed on the edge of Pu'u'oo crater is no more. A part of the rim fell into the crater and took the camera with it. Oddly enough, the camera landed upright while the tripod is in pieces. A new camera has been placed on the north side and will be online soon. I wonder if more will be seen in there now. Probably not. But once in a while, the wind will give us a peek into Pu'u'oo to see some of the changes. My DH and I used to watch that cam to see what was going to happen on the floor of the crater. That was before the TEB opened up and the lava in the crater started gasing out. I watch this volcano and I know I will go back to it more often when Eyjaf stops. That may be quite a while.

Thanks for the update Ruby.

@Irna #9. You're touching very hot ground here :-D
There is an emergency plan that was prepared by the Italian Department for Civil Defense and volcanologists already 15 years ago and revised recently. This plan assumes that two weeks will be enough for a coordinated and orderly evacuation, and that the volcano will give at least two weeks of warning before erupting catastrophically.

That's tricky indeed, because (a) you noted correctly that traffic (and not only traffic) in the Vesuvius-Campi Flegrei area is hilariously chaotic on any normal day, (b) even if it were possible to carry out a coordinated and orderly evacuation of at least half a million people, it is not certain that Vesuvius (or Campi Flegrei, at that point) will erupt on schedule. I never cease to cite the example of Redoubt in Alaska last spring, which seemed to be about ready to erupt in late-January but erupted only in late-March, that is, two months later. Two months of delay in the case of the Naples area would bring a social, economic and political crisis of dimensions hitherto unseen in Europe, and would require an entirely new generation of volcanologists ;

@Boris, when does a volcano ever erupt on cue? LOL

@Reynir12 - andif you follow a bit futher you will find http://www.scq.ubc.ca/sciencescouts/the-active-volcano-is-my-research-l…
I think these are all fictitious and not for sale....but maybe not, in which case they might design a specific Eyjaf one, proceeds to help all researchers on this blog!

Is it common for volcano's to produce "mini tornado's" ?
The first time a few days ago on the Mulakot cam i saw one traveling beside the mountain slope.
First thinking it was just dust being blowed away.
But at this moment on the Thoro cam a saw a few already,
every time developing on the right side in the camview.
(on the sandbanks) it begings with a very visable white dot, getting a little bigger and then traveling beside the slopes. If you look carefully you will sometimes see a white thin line going all the way up into the clouds.

Hmmm. Birdseye, you may be on to something there. An Eyjaf patch would be cool, especially with the full name on it. :-)

Better updates now at Iceland Met Office with interesting animation of ash cloud.
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

@Franklin #18 I think what you are seeing are "dust devils" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_devil

@DianeNCa But it would have to have a reference to Erik's blog...maybe the basic URL? : )

I see the GPS measurements are back and it looks like she's inflating again.

@Diane #16, luckily some volcanoes have erupted more or less on cue, think of Pinatubo or Rabaul ... there are quite a few cases of this kind. But all of these occurred in countries where living standards are significantly lower than in Italy, and tens to hundreds of thousands could be evacuated without posing too much resistance. That would be more of a problem here, where nobody would want to leave their homes with the five or six super-HD television sets and the computers and the new refrigerators and microwaves and laundry machines and the second and the third car and so on. So the volcano erupting on schedule is only one facet of a multifaceted challenge ...

Birdseye #22, perhaps we could have a general looking volcano or it could be Eyjaf and something like "Eruptions Blog on Eyjaf" or something like that. There is limited space so maybe others have an idea, too. It would be neat to have something like that to commemorate the eruption and this blog, too. It would take a lot of work to set up, though.

Thanks SUW, that's exactly what i saw ;)
They are short lived 30 sec to 1 minute.
The second picture (Wiki) are the ones i saw.
Only difference is that these (camview)are very white??
Maybe a trick of the cam.
No more scratching my head now.
Nice to meet you "Dust Devil"... :)

I'm sure it's not so, but on the Thorlsfelli cam it looks like a smooth brown lake has formed where the old lake used to be. It's likely just a combination of the poor lighting and the low resolution.

I'm curious to know if people are able to get house insurance if they live aroung Pompeii or Vesuvius ?

Eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull
Status Report: 17:00 GMT, 17 May 2010

"Heading: The plum is drifting east." :)

On a more conclusive note:

"Earthquakes: Six microeathquakes have been recorded since midnight. Most of them
occurred at depths of more than 10 km.

GPS deformation: Continued horizonal displacements towards the center of
EyjafjallajÃ¶kull volcano and subsidence."

----------------
It ain't over till it's over OR It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings ?

notendur.hi.is/runa/eyja_gps.html

Zander, they probably can, baring any volcanic eruption. I suppose they might be able to get volcano insurance like CA can get quake insurance, but it would cost a lot and would probably have a large deductible.

Boris?

@Birdseye #17: A whole bunch of volcanologists could take that design to their local custom badge sewers.

Still shots from the Vodafone cam are accessible through yesterday afternoon via direct URL. If I am interpreting the date/time parameters in the URL correctly, they stop at 2:59 yesterday afternoon. You can manually enter earlier values for the timestamp and date and see photos from over the weekend when the live cam wasn't accessible. (Someone tell me if I've got this wrong.)

extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/16/14/59.jpg

@Frankill - sorry I misspelt your name! Too tired this evening to be coherent!

@carla yeah, the cameras sometime looks like there's a new lake, but there isn't! there's nothing to plug the hole in the moraine!

Slightly OT www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/space/18cosmos.html

Someone like me who has managed internationalization and localization for a large corporate website should be more precise when talking about time to an international audience. The pics mentioned in #32 run through 14:59 (2:59 pm) yesterday. ;\

@Boris 15
Thank you for the answer. Two weeks, that's slightly better than the three weeks I had heard of, but still frightening. Moreover, I can't imagine half a million Napolitan people in a "coordinated and orderly evacuation" :-). But then, I cannot imagine it in any other place either, with a volcano like Vesuvius in the background...

@Carla #35: The images are timestamped in one corner. Image time is about two minutes behind real time.

Has the Mila Thoro cam been moved to the right slightly, I know there is alot of ash and what looks like mud on the lake bed but I am a bit confused, I have been watching the cams everyday for weeks now and........oh I'm not explaining myself very well, someone just go and have a look and tell me what they think please

Gan someone explain the light area I see on the Thoro cam right now?

@ Suw33 haha Funny, I didn't even noticed it...
I make typo's all the time :)

@Carla27 The lake doesn't travel a km....
visibility was good at the time.
And i do have high resolution (better than Thoro)snapshots of them and some are big....and crystal clear.
It has nothing to do with limited or faulty cam conditions.i'm sure some one else must have seen them too.

@Ruby - it's in the same position but there's a lot of light-play tonight, especially that brilliant white blob which also shows up on the Mulakot cam (and was on the Hvols cam until a few minutes ago).

Memo to Mila:
Please focus your Thoro cam.
Thanks in advance.

@Frito Thank you I think you are right its the way light is falling, playing tricks with me hah I was starting to get disorientated I like it kept just the same position so I can notice any small changes going on. Panic over now lol

@Carla and Frankill or anyone ~ do you guys remember seeing what now looks like a huge white cliff on the left side of the lake?

@Ruby ~ don't laugh, but for the first week or so I was using those little post-it flags on my monitor to mark positions :)

@40 - Frankill, not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps you thought I was responding to something you posted earlier? Anyhow, my comment was not related to anything. I was just remarking about the faux lake on the Thorolsfelli cam.

and ... my trusty post-it flags tells me she's cranking it up a notch :)

I don't think the "white cliff" has changed. that is the lateral / terminal moraine for the glacier. I think that it is due to the low sun picking out the vertical face while the geround level is in deep shadow from the other side of the moraine. The same colour can be picked up on the outside wall of the other side of the moraine and along the base of the EF massif.

@Frito I'm not laughing I think thats a great idea, now why did I not think of that :)

@Gordon ~ thank you. The visuals this afternoon on the various cams sure are stoking our imaginations.

Reef. Thoro cam, I think someone metioned a few threads ago that the problem for Thoro cam is with 'flash' (something to do with the server, someone had else better explain) rather than with the camera itself.

Imagination.. see 7 above... :)

@snotraviking ~ saw that earlier, love it!

I have a question re Icelandic names. If a Freddottir marries a Barneyson, what is her last name?

@Carla40 i was refering to nr26 & nr27.
Youre answer came right after my post.
Sorry fot that one :)
A little bit confused with all those Devils i supose :)

@princes Frito43 :) Think it's still the same. A little more dust and the sun playing arround.

I think there's a rainbow coming up right now.

Frito, re 52, that's a question just begging for a punchline... Shame I can't think of one just now.

@frito As I recall, an icelandic girl donÂ´t change name when getting married, And their phonebook is sorted by first name too.!!! At least this was true 1989 when I lived there.

Hvols cam looks stunning at the moment I'm not really into art but if someone where to paint me a picture of what it looks like right now I would definately hang it on my wall, the colours of the clouds and the ash plume in the background along with the landscape are spectacular

Has anyone heard anything else about the lava flow at Eyafjoll moving in the north as well as on the NW Flank? I heard one blurb about a week ago and nothing since. I hope that it stopped, because a lot of folks live on that flank.
Thanks to all providing photo's, i can not take any, and the one's posted here are incredible.

@Ruby I agree and was going to post the same thing but instead was struggling to open my MWSnap program to capture it. Awesome stuff today :)

@snotraviking Thank you. And if they have a son? Daughter? What would their last names be?

"8. ... It is forbidden to take a new surname in this country.

9. nationals can not take the surname of their spouse."

From Google Translate of ...
www.althingi.is/lagas/135a/1996045.html

Just looking at info concerning Mt Hood, seems this one is really not known for major explosive eruptions, but its lahars would be wicked. Lots of ice up there. Really bad news for Portland and the surrounding area when this one wakes up. Just a matter of time.

@birdseye #50: Can't remember who it was either, but (s)he e-mailed to ask and got the reply that the Flash server (I suspect it encodes and serves Flash video to the masses) was being troublesome. For all I know (sod all, btw), there might be a bandwidth shortage, too.

@Frito #52: She remains Fred's daughter, he remains Barney's son.

There is a really interesting change in viewpoints between Mulakot and Hvolsvelli just now. Mulakot showing ashfall from column very clearly.

Incidentally, did anyone see the bus stopping at Mulakot about an hour ago?. It's the first sign of life I've seen in a month.

Lesson in icelandic naming:

Mom Hildur Thorsteinsdottir and dad Thorgeir Baldurson gets a son who they name Haraldur Thorgeirsson. He gets his fathers first name + son. I donÂ´t know what will happen if the father is unknown, maybe he is called Hildurson. A daughter would be called Thorgeirsdottir in surname.

Son is the same in english of course, dottir is daughter.
If I got it wrong, please correct me, I am scandinavian but not icelandic and my surname is neither -son nor dottir.

@Reynir ~ Thank you. So as I understand it:

Ms. Freddottier and Mr. Barneyson's girl and boy would be Pebbles Freddottir and Bambam Barneyson respectively?

@cynthia #57 ~ I haven't heard much about lava flowing since May 10th when it was "low and not visible on cameras".

Here's a link to IMO's daily updates:

//en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

interesting image on
http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg
is it a trick of the lighting or ?

So...
Ms. A. Bdottir and Mr. X Yson' girl and boy are:

Miss C. Adottir (or C Xdottir, after the father?)and Mr. Z Xson?

Ms. A. Bdottir and Mr. X Yson' girl and boy are:

Miss C. Xdottir, after the father and Mr. Z Xson

Now youÂ´ve got it right Frito. You shold really see a family tree from an icelandic person...interesting stuff.

Before the ash and fog came kicking in yesterday morning I made two timelapse movies from the Vodafone and MÃºlakot webcams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_NuBcOht4E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Qjm3UvgdvM
The MÃºlakot one is quite overexposed unfortunately...

@Frito #64: Vala (Pebbles) would have been FredsdÃ³ttir up here and Bammbamm would'be been Barneysson. Now, if those two married and had kids, the daughter would be BammbammsdÃ³ttir and the son would be Bammbammsson. Y'see, they are not surnames but patronyms.

I've been looking for the author of a poem quoted earlier in the previous EF oreintated post, I thought it might have been by Rudyard Kipling, but haven't found it so far.

I did find this however, it's original context seems to lie in pre WW2 politicking, but I think it describes the community here quite well (feel free to disagree!)

WE KNOW the Rocketâs upward whizz;
We know the Boom before the Bust.
We know the whistling Wail which is
The Stick returning to the Dust.
We know how much to take on trust
Of any promised Paradise.
We know the Pieâlikewise the Crust.
We know the Bonfire on the Ice.

@pierre, Thank you for the time-lapse movies. WhatÂ´s the music on the vodafone cam, (composer and piece). Good combination with that and the timelapse. LIKED IT!

VERY NICE PIERRE.... And the composer on the first piece?

@Reynir, snotraviking, raving: Thank you! Patronyms is the key! Yes, the Iceland phone directory must be quite interesting!

Maybe as well that the camera on ValahnÃºkur is offline. We don't have to watch it drown in ash, then.

#73: Yes, to those unused to the ordering keys being 1) First name, 2) Patronym, 3) Middle name(s).

#71, I think it is Mozart, horn concerto in E-flat. Whenever I hear this piece I think of the words that Flanders and Swann put to the piece sometime in the sixties.

http://www.nyanko.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/fas/anotherhat_ill.html

Looked at a science show today on the TV- they claimed that if Katla erupts she is so much more powerful than Eyja that the ash could reach the whole northern hemisphere. They also said that telephone connections could be affected. Can anyone explain to me how that would work?

Indeed, the piece on the vodafone timelapse is from a Mozart horn concerto (concerto no 4, K.495) ;)

#78: Happens to be one of my favourites. Another is the 2nd mvmt from clarinet concerto K.622. And that includes Hooked On Classics.

Question : I watched the video mentioned above and I am thoughtful about the volume of magma ejected every second by this volcano. Indeed, I know by the web page of Martin Rietze, that the most secure location to photograph and film is 400 m away from the crater (and it is the same location which is used). And by judging the apparent size on screen of the ejecta, I am under the impression that many of them are car sized and that less numerous fragments are house sized or more (?). So, what is the rate of the eruption during the intensive phases? Other question, I am under the impression that there is more than one vent active? Am I wrong?

@77 Too hard to speak for coughing?

Maybe they think that the ash can affect microwave transmissions. If it has the right size and electrical characteristics it could but it barely shows on the weather radar...

@Snotra I presume they mean weaked satellite signals as they might not be able to penetrate the cloud. But most countries have a fibre backbone now that circles the globe so it seems unlikely.

Been on Mt.Hood Skiing and hiking. Climbed nearly to the top then got hit by weather- and (Thankfully) chickened out.
When we got down to the Lodge, we had a little shaker-this was about 1979...
Driving up the Hood Loop Highway you can see where old
Lahars and floods came down Hood River drainage. Also in the areas around Hood. All look to be quite recent.The Sandy
River Drainage has some evidence also.
That could be quite a mess if it went up with a bang, but
from what I have heard and read, Hood isn't as explosive as Rainier or St. Helens. at least mostly in it's Geologic history....

Try again :) Where would one find information on S02 emissions for this eruption?

Jon

Kaboom, donÂ´t you see the huge impact it would have on peopleÂ´s lifes? Not only are they grounded due to flight ban, the cell phones stop working. Now, thereÂ´s a real katastrofic situation for many ! (IÂ´m not really serious)

Sometimes IÂ´m amazed by some comments, like the very serious question asked a few weeks ago by a otherwise well informed person. "Why donÂ´t they stop the volcano, maybe they can bomb it.."

@Jon,
Someone here (I'm sorry I can't remember who, but I think he's an expert) said this is the best source for SO2 info:

//sacs.aeronomie.be/nrt/index.php?Year=2010&Month=05&Day=09&point.x=108&point.y=26&Region=000

@snotra: And a wonderful story arose of that. Wonder if it can be embellished a bit (can it have too many bells and whistles?) ...

#85) Yeah, sure bomb "E", open up some more fissures and create a bigger mess. I believe God allows things to happen. It is just "E's" turn to erupt. We human need to get over it and just deal with it.

Looks like "E" is still going, although the ash plume is not as high as it was over the last couple of days. I am sure "E" is just taking a break and there is most likely alot more to come!!

Hello there. I'm sorry to say, but it seems we're going to have a very cloudy week, from now on. Hope I'm wrong...
http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/areas/

I think that I am seeing stem on ValahnjÃºkur web camera. It is mixed in with the ash. But it is hard to tell for sure.

Harmonic tremor continue to increase, or at least fluctuate a lot for the moment.

Regarding my earlier posting http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/05/monday_musings_iceland_update…

Just noticed the following statement which might have been in place since the creation of the document notendur.hi.is/runa/eyja_gps.html

"The GPS stations have provided important constraints on the evolution of the activity at the volcano. Thorvaldseyri (THEY) started moving south in the end of December followed by rapid deformation at Skogaheidi (SKOG) and Steinsholt (STE2) in the weeks prior to the eruption. Stations Solheimaheidi (SOHO) and Godabunga (GOLA) have also shown significant deformation due to the activity." (My emphasis on bold face)

Stations SOHO and GOLA border on Katla. To my inexpert eye, they do not follow the same evolution of deformation as those which are more closely associated with Eyjafjallajokull.

For me, it suggests that the Eyja system has physical influence upon the Katla system. It is evidence that the linkage of eruptions at Eyjafjallajokull and Katla is more than spurious statistical correlation. It does NOT indicate that an eruption of Katla is necessarily immanent.

Quake near Katla:

http://beforeitsnews.com/news/45/173/Uh-oh_Katla_Volcano_Just_Rumbled.h…

We need a lot more than a solitary quake before we can start Katla-mongering again.

@92 Quake near Katla:

Monday 17.05.201008:32:1963.626-19.0419.5 km-0.237.78

Magnitude -0.2
Quality 37.78%

That is really scraping the bottom of the barrel isn't it. Perhaps more significant as being reported than having occurred.

#91 @Raving, there seems to be lots of speculation about this correlation, but, so far, I couldn't well understand how come Katla remain so silent,lately, while other volcanoes like Bardabunga and Reykjanes, even Hekla, have shown more EQ activity?
#92 @Tennyson: Here is no expert speaking, but, from what I can recall there have been more quakes like this (and stronger) under MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull since the beginning of current eruption. What I don't know, and really would be grateful if anybody could explain, is if such quakes have been spotted on a current basis before all this started.

@90 JÃ³n Are you connecting the ValahnjÃºkur web camera?

@93 Erik You spoil all the fun. ;>)

Wow! Our Lady is the Volcano of the Week!

#93 Thank you, Erik. I think the press shouldn't ever have mentioned Katla from the beginning.
#96 Hi Dan! Looks like they're dealing better wit oil spill, aren't they?

Umm.. I'm far from being a seismologist but ...how can a magnitude be negative (-0.2)?

@Gordon76 - (OT -response...) oh thank you! my favorite was always the Spider in the Bath....

@99 I think the magnitude scale is logarithmic? If a standard earthquake is 1 then one a tenth as big would have magnitude 0 and one a hundredth as intense would have a magnitude of -1.

Am I right?

@Ruby 99- from earlier today, old thread...Re: Daniel #495: Earthquake magnitudes are on an open-ended logarithmic scale, with no upper and no lower limit. While you're not going to see a magnitude 100 quake (would the solar system survive?) it's quite possible to have an earthquake that's less than magnitude 0.0. When the math works out, the exponent turns negative instead of positive. You won't see earthquakes with that small of a magnitude reported that often, except in highly monitored areas, because earthquakes that small are hard to detect against background noise.

Posted by: lifeblack | May 17, 2010 11:06 AM

Ok, so we all know that one small quake does not an eruption make... however which of the two - Katla or Hekla - would you rather see erupt and why?

And which is the most dangerous to Iceland and Europe?

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/
pff who's Katla ?

We got all this activity building up alot of pressure, we are all waiting for Katla, for now, but lets see what the games will present. ( We got the magma coming from we West "/earthquakes/reykjanesridge/" -> Result: Eja; but since the start we got also alot of magma coming from the NE "earthquakes/tjornes-large/" and this was a active zone.
Where is this pressure ?

I dont doubt it that we will see activity at this big point, no maybe not a big one but it will melt, for sure.

@63,64,66,67,69,73 not that it has to do with volcanos, but since it was brought up:

The patronymic surname system was quite well known and in use in northern Europe before and during the middle ages, like Rembrandt's fathers first name was Harmens, and Rembrandts full name was:
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn
(both a patronymic and a family surname)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt

Some parts of Sweden even had the patronymic surname system up until last century, or why do so many Swedish names end in -son?

So it was not unique to Icaland at all, it only survived there longer.

Nowadays matronymic surnames are rapidly gaining popularity in that young people have or choose or change their surname from their father to their mother. Probably more often than not with respect to which parent means more to them, especially in divorce cases. In other cases some even chose to use both parent's names to honour both parents.

Mr. A's and Mrs B's female offspring C, might then call herself:
C A_and_B's_daughter or the other way around:
C B_and_A's_daugther
(underlines only for explanation of flow and not used).

@Helen, #103: How should anybody know before the eruptions are present?

# 105 "The patronymic surname system" is also used in Russia, isn't it?

@98 Renato Hi there. Well, they say they have a siphon installed, but only getting 20% of it with that. All the maps keep showing it way off shore from Florida and Alabama, yet they have found tar confirmed from the spill in Alabama. They keep showing it moving around in the same basic area. My opinion? BS. Five million gallons and counting. Now headed towards the loop current too which takes it to the Keys. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but I don't think we're getting the truth on this thing. Either that or they have no clue.

Top of plume visible on hvols cam

Going going gone behind the clouds again:(

@107 I would think so, but don't really know for sure...

#108 @Dan, I haven't been following the news on this spill deeply enough(it really makes me feel bad).Here, the Brazilian Govt. has been very enthusiastic about oil drilling under the salt layer near Rio's shore. But they don't talk much about consequences and I have a feeling they don't want us to dig much into what's happening in the Gulf. And there's also the big dam they plan to build in the Amazon basin... looks like greed is catching us too.
#105 #107 #111 From Wikipedia: "In many areas patronyms predate the use of family names. They are common as middle names in Russia, and in Iceland surnames are an exception, with the law in favour of patronyms (or more recently, matronyms).Many Celtic, English, Iberian, Scandinavian and Slavic surnames originate from patronyms, e.g. Wilson (son of William), Powell (from "ap Hywel"), FernÃ¡ndez (son of Fernando), RodrÃguez (son of Rodrigo), Carlsson (son of Carl), StefanoviÄ (son of Stefan) and O'Connor (from "Ã Conchobhair", meaning grandson/descendant of Conchobhar). Similarly, other cultures which formerly used patronyms have since switched to the more widespread style of passing the father's last name to the children (and wife) as their own." Sorry for the long post, but I found it so interesting...

#109/110- The Mulakot web cam shows our lovely "E", the link is below:
http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

Here are a couple of satellite views of the oil spill.
http://www.roffs.com/deepwaterhorizon.html

@112 Renato I'm just glad my heritage doesn't follow patronyms. Desiderio(son). :)

There is no need to go Katla-mongering Icelanders. They worry well enough about Katla and other perils in a long and well documented history of hardship and co-existence with the dangerous situations.

I don't think that anyone is hiding anything. The situation is being communicated straight and direct because putting it otherwise invites unnecessary disaster.

There were almost 6,000 visits from IPs in Iceland to this blog in the past 60+ days. Assuming 6,000 distinct IP addresses implies that upwards of .2% of the Iceland's population has visited here recently.

If a tenuous connection with regard to Katla's possible future was drawn, it was done so deliberately and appropriately, meaning not less, nor more than what was stated directly.

That is my inexpert opinion.

@Renato #112 - thank you for that. I too find it very interesting. I remember reading how some names (not Icelandic) are formed with places of birth and even the father's trade.

I wanted to learn more about Iceland and wondered about all the dottirs I had seen in articles about our Lady Eyja. Now I know!

Re 112 about the end of the medieval time and the rise of independant crafts people as oposed to serfs there was a shift to sornames being a indicator of a trade ie miller,smith and so forth

@Dan #114 - I hear ya. My last name would be 18 letters long and probably as unpronouceable as Eyjafallloo... (well, you know). And even more difficult to spell than it is now.

Just call the volcano "Eyja" and get it over with.

I suppose the Katla story (post no. 92) is probably as authentic as another bulletin carried by that website, claiming that "legendary minder metal singer Ronnie James Dio" isn't really "flat".

I'm shockingly ignorant of volcanology considering that I share a dinner table most evenings with my father-in-law, Frank Fitch, ex of Birkbeck College, London (some of you might know the name). But EyjafjallajÃ¶kull has really caught my imagination and I'm delighted to have found your website which I've been monitoring constantly. Almost all of it is completely over my head, but I get a lot out of all the info, discussions and links. Thank you to Erik and others for making it available to all and for making it so fascinating.

Just had a great lightning bolt on the Hvols cam.

Re: A few days ago there was speculation in this blog about Eyjla not having a "real" name. Should there be a correlation between Katla and Eyja I'd suggest "Katladottir"(?). (Or otherwise: who's older?)

Oh damn, that video of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is making me drool... I know where I'm going this summer ^_^ ! Anyone joining me?

How big is the danger zone surrounding Mt. Vesuvius? If not overly large you might be better off walking, auto traffic will cause traffic jams, cars broken down or out of gas could plug roads.

More lightning on Hvolvs cam..two bolts in two minutes!!!

#114 @Dan: In Italian Desiderio means Desire. It should be then "Desireson" - the child of desire. Hmmm... that sounds a bit of a commonplace. Aren't we all "Children of Desire?".
Please, Erik, don't ban me for my stupidity, just waiting for the clouds to dissipate.

@Gijs de Reijke #123 ~ I found just the place earlier today:

http://www.farmholidays.is/FarmDetails/651/fagrahlid

Captured a lightning bolt.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8388935@N04/4616885659/sizes/o/

Is it just me or did the glacier disapear on the FLIR camera?? It was a nice dark purple a day or two ago...
On the Line of sight camera there is steam rising from that area... Just wondering.

@Dan #128 ~ Great! (but it's asking for a Yahoo login)

@130 Frito Lay

Click on my name and see it on my blog

@130/131 Frito Lay
or go here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8388935@N04/

@ Renato #126 - the clouds are moving and we can see substantial steam emanating from the trench above the 'V notch'. Show time starts soon if the clouds hold off.

@Dan ~ Nice!!! Thank you.

Great pic Dan!

@128 Dan ~ STUNNING ~ :-D

Patience is a virtue, but luck is better. :)
Actually I'm trying a video screen capture program called CaptureWizPro. It lets you take a snapshot of the video also. That was from a 2 minute video.

Just got a lightning shot too...

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n60/Thunderchild_photos/volcano/Icel…

@138 Just Awesome!

@138 - Neat shot!

@Boris Behncke (#24)

That would be more of a problem here, where nobody would want to leave their homes with the five or six super-HD television sets and the computers and the new refrigerators and microwaves and laundry machines and the second and the third car and so on.

Pompeii? Some things don't change.

Don't forget Mulacam...

@Dylan Ray 138 Caught the same one.
.anyone - one linked bolt? Several?

@Renato #5: Perhaps you have the wrong 'typical' shape in mind for a stratovolcano? A bit like how most people have the wrong impression of the shape of a moon; most moons in our solar system are not round because they don't have sufficient gravity to collapse themselves into a ball - and yet if you ask people what shape a moon would be, the overwhelming answer is "spherical".

#138 Wow! Fantastic Dylan!

#144 Thank you, @ MadScientist.
#133 @ Kathryn: Looks like I've been "punished" by my talking. Couldn't see the steam that you mentioned. But thank you for the hint. And didn't see the bolts, except for Dan's incredible pic.
I love this blog and all the friendly, illustrated, people. Learning a lot here.

Mulakot = Leaning Tower of Eyja :)

It's the fifth M5+ EQ on a row on the Atlantic Ridge in the last 24 hs. Two in Greenland sea, three in the South Atlantic, near Tristan da Cunha / Trindade Ils. Any connections?
5.1
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 20:05:41 UTC
Monday, May 17, 2010 at 07:05:41 PM at epicenter
Location 16.429Â°S, 14.231Â°W
Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region: SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE

Lightning in Ash Plumes - a question. Great PICS - missed it!

Is lightning just a problem at the eruption site or is the ash plume that moves in higher elevation also suspectible to this type of lightning? I am thinking of potential additional problems beside ash for air craft and pilots.

Yahoo has an article on the Volcanoes. What do you all think? http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/whichusvolcanoesaremostdangerousrig…

Is the wind speed too high or the eruption is loosing strength? If so, what would be the signs of a decline of the current eruptions?

The speed of the clouds moving, seems to indicate very strong winds.

Curiously shaped plume on Mulakot. Spectacular.

#152 #153 @Kyle and @Carla: If you look from the distance you can clearly see the plume from Hekla. And the weather looks just fine!
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

@Renato, yes indeed. That is one of my favorite cams but, unlike today, you don't usually see much plumage from it. (Who says I can't use "plumage" that way?) According to the weather station on that site, wind is currently very calm out of the south.

@Carla (#153) http://i43.tinypic.com/b6t1xl.jpg

@Dylan Ray (#138) â *shocâing* â

@149 JB You need the quantities of ash at the eruption site to make lightning. But scientists still do not understand the mechanism that creates the setup for volcanic lightning.

@ Carla: Yes, our Lady does have a plumage. A black, mourn-like fur. But I must say her power, if prevailing winds are so slow, has decreased substantially, telling from the leaning angle of the plume. I don't know about tremors, (JÃ³n Frimann said they were increasing a while ago) but as for the the swarms, they appear to have ceased. I'm wondering if that's an indication of the "beginning of an end" here. BTW what happened to Fimmvorduhals? Is it still steaming or is it just over?

@128 Dan, did you remove the picture everyone says is stunning? Flickr says I don't have permission to view it....

Anyone know what's happening with the Vodaphone camera?

@Dan, your blog is full of beautiful pics. Congratulation. As for the lighting, how can be them compared from regular cumulus lightning in terms of energy released?

@157 ~ Here is an explanation of volcanic lightning from theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel (with totally awesome pictures)

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/04/volcanic_lightning_eyja…

A tornado at the slope of Osorno volcano a few years ago (search for the image)

http://www.meteomes.cl/tornados%20en%20chile.htm

@159 Alastair click on my name and it will take you to the blog where I post these.

@160 Renato Thanks. The energy created from severe weather is actually up for debate too. :) The main difference being the material. One is moisture the other rock and glass (which in theory has no electrical conductive properties)

Well, calling it a night here.

#161 Thanks for the post, Frito (where's the title today?). But still I don't know how can they pose a threat for aviation and how much energy it generates.

@Dan: It gets more and more interesting every day. Thank you.

#164 They're really not any different from lightning from "regular" thunderstorms. It's always just positive and negative ions rubbing up against each other. Voltage may vary.

Thus, as far as threat to aviation, it's no more or less.

@Dan; thanks - great pictures!

# Thanks, Your Highness!

#168 ~ You're welcome Sir Renato!

Now, if only I could figure out how to share my Photobucket ...

Goodmorning guys..Thought I would open up with a link to some really nice pictures from our beloved EF.

http://marieaunet.blogspot.com/2010/04/eyjafjallajokull.html

These are taken with a long shutter time so the lightnings are "ackumulated". So cudos to the photographer!

Good morning Daniel. Wow, just wow. Thank you for sharing that!

# 131, # 138
Stunning pictures! Thanks for sharing them.
( as I normally sleep around that time, I'm very glad that you post pictures, observations and time-lapsvideo's, so can enjoy them in the morning.)

#170 Daniel: Wow! unbelievable! Thank you..

Awww ya gotta love the way the light continues to play on our Lady Eyja. On the Mulakot cam it looks someone gave her beautiful mane a buzz cut lol

#170 @ Daniel: What is that? Christmas trees or 4th july fireworks? No doubt people got their inspiration from volcanoes! Astonishing!

EQ 1.5
Tuesday
18.05.201003:53:0363.626-19.7301.1 km1.588.2312.8 km E of Seljalandsfoss

Captured a lighting this night on the Mulakot cam:
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5051/20100518004450.jpg

@ Peter Cobbold, if you are around Peter this might interest you:

Here's a screen capture from the White Island seismograph showing a remarkably regular signal (with a short burst of activity every 40 minutes).

http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e211/NoEnz/Bildschirmfoto2010-05-18um…

here's the direct link to the site which will of course update automatically so you might lose the pattern:

http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcano/drums/rt/wiz/10/drum.png

If I am not mistaken (the chances are not that good!) only the three big signals are earthquakes, the others are regularly recurring bouts of tremor and are probably associated with geothermal activity. Nevertheless, it's nice to see such regularity.

Here is the Mulakot timelapse for yesterday (17 May) evening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycRiCzQUHjo

Have a look at Hvolsvelli cam, beautiful plume over snowcovered mountain.!!

@ Frito Lay #127: hereby I declare that you're officially my hero for today ^_^ !

I just hope that EyjafjallajÃ¶kull will keep showing the current activity till I get there, airspace closures or not ;-) .

Tuesday
18.05.201007:56:1264.564-17.1731.9 km1.342.2818.4 km NNE of GrÃmsfjall
Tuesday
18.05.201007:56:1064.502-17.3411.4 km1.590.0111.3 km NNW of GrÃmsfjall

The activity today looks quite diminished, the ash plume is much weaker and strongly bent by the wind, and emissions are more pulsating than in the past few days - is EyjafjallajÃ¶kull wanting to give us a break?

Re the avalanche (and possible eruption) at Mikeno volcano in the Virunga volcanic chain (Congo), I have found a news bit (in French) here: www.afriscoop.net/journal/spip.php?breve2586
It speaks of a snow avalanche dislodged from the summit area of the volcano following heavy rain falls, 21 dead and 36 missing, but NOT of an eruption.

Does anyone happen to know a link to a good video of MSH eruption?

Loving this blog, learning loads!

@Carolyn #184, you may want to try at forums.mvgroup.org (registration required), where you will find an infinity of educational videos to download, some via bittorrent, others from download sites such as rapidshare. Once you're registered, you search "volcano" or "eruption" ... and then you'll be occupied for a while.

In the meantime try this, it will take hours to download but might be worth trying:
hotfile.com/dl/41451759/c3ffc4c/nova.s37e18.720p.hdtv.x264-orenji.mkv.html

@86 ... thanks Frito Lay.

@Carolyn

Here's a couple of short clips from YouTube showing the initial collapse of Mt. St. Helens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgRnVhbfIKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1gpnu-fdUU&feature=related

Nice to see the cloud blowing away from the UK at last. Visability not that great to me it looks as if there is some low level white plumes of steam heading away from the Hvolsvelli camera towards Skogar, perhaps suggesting a lava flow moving in that direction

I think I saw a helicopter in that area around 10.30am UK time, so fingers crossed we should get some shots of what the South of the volcano looks like for the first time this afternoon, possibly from RUV. If my theory is right there will be a lot of meltwater in the Kaldaklifsa catchment area, about 5km west of Skogafoss.

'The Volcano that Stopped the World' or, as we know her, 'the little volcano that could' is now available for viewing online. Some nice footage included.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Passionate_Eye/ID=1496481401

@182

Note the following earthquake clusters around the Euro-African plates

Note:

1. these are all since Friday
2. The areas with the 3 clusters have a historical seismicity of less than 1 per year so why 2 or 3 in a weekend?
3. Is the Euro-African plate system increasingly on the move and is that driving increased actvity in Iceland? I.e. Eyja is not just an Icelandic event but symptomatic of a broader tectonic mobilisation?

Friday, May 14, 2010 13:25:34 UTC 39.5974 -29.7304 4.9 22.3 Azores Islands, Portugal

Sunday, May 16, 2010 20:23:04 UTC 73.4721 7.2253 4.8 29.8 Greenland Sea

Sunday, May 16, 2010 16:39:33 UTC 73.4077 7.305 5.2 10 Greenland Sea

Sunday, May 16, 2010 15:29:02 UTC 73.4271 7.4964 5 10 Greenland Sea

Sunday, May 16, 2010 06:52:42 UTC 35.8529 4.0158 4.8 10.1 northern Algeria

Sunday, May 16, 2010 03:51:30 UTC 35.9006 4.0891 4.4 10 northern Algeria

Friday, May 14, 2010 12:29:22 UTC 35.9029 4.0316 5.1 10 northern Algeria

Sunday, May 16, 2010 01:08:07 UTC -51.8661 28.2533 5.3 10 south of Africa

Monday, May 17, 2010 20:05:41 UTC -16.429 -14.2309 5.1 10 southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Sunday, May 16, 2010 05:30:58 UTC -34.8424 -16.0623 5.1 10 southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge

I hate to say the words others have already used, but watching all the reports on this blog made on eartquakes, under Icelandic volcanoes or not, makes me say them again: correlation does not mean causation. It's very common for volcanoes to produce quakes (of different types!) and the fact that they do doesn't mean they're going to erupt any time soon. 'Increased' seismic activity in Europe (if that's what it is, because I don't see anything unusual) could mean that the quakes are related, but it's much more likely that they're not, especially seen the small sizes of the earthquakes. And then there's ofcourse the fact that the quakes produced under EyjafjallajÃ¶kull are of a very different type than the 'normal' tectonic quakes reported by sites like EMSC and IRIS.

Hi Gijs! Where've you been? Out on field trips?

Gijs, so in short we can say that the simplest and most probable solution is usually the correct one (OccamÂ´s razor).

@Carolyn #184 This Nova documentary is also available in alt.binaries.multimedia, see http://www.nzbindex.nl/search/?q=orenji-x264-nova.3718&age=&max=25&sort…
If you know how to download from usenet.
There is also a dvd of the eruption (2000): http://www.amazon.com/Eruption-Mount-Helens-Large-Format/dp/B00003ETHK

I don't know if this video has been posted already, but I just found this online and thought I would share it.

http://www.maniacworld.com/Too-Close-to-a-Volcano.html

@Fritoprincessofthe'night' 161 Great link

@Pierre 179 thank you - I love that people are now adding music to the time-lapse vids and finding bits to match timing and mood.

@Corporal_E good morning Did you notice that the video @194 of the scientists at the crater is called 'Hekla volcano!?"

@196 Top of the morning to ya birdseyeUSA. I must have missed that somewhere, cause when I go to the link the title simple says "Too close to a volcano". Either way, that is E isn't it?

Seems she has shrouded herself for another "semi active" moment. Tremor are picking up slightly on the helicorders and on http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html the HVO tremorplot (0,5 - 1Hz band) is also on the increase.

Probably just one of her hickups but still, it never fails, when she has gone in hiding she is more active. :-)

@Corporal_E #197: Yep. It's a news clip shot a few days ago by one Ãmar Ragnarsson. I think it's the same as someone was grumbling about being unviewable on hir Mac.

The Katla camera looks half-blind because of rain. The Hekla cam looks half-blind because of sun. The others look half-blind because of ash. Confusticate and bebother it!

@199 Thanks Reynir. I just liked watching the lava bombs fly on the video. Those people standing there in the vid had an amazingly close view of everything.

Rrr, just like everyone else, I am sick of the clouds over Iceland. Couldn't Iceland borrow some of the weather control technology of the Chinese to keep the cams clear for all of us Eyjaf junkies, like they used during the Olympics? (LOL, just kidding)

#201 :) They could also use HAARP for that purpose. After all, sooner or later, there will be an Armageddon...

@Reynir199 hehe

While we're talking about tremor plots, could someone please explain the different herz levels' meanings in relation to what goes on?? If I missed it earlier somewhere, I'll try to find it to save someone else the trouble if I get a hint as to how far back to look. . I get the overall picture but I want to know about green, red & blue....I notice differences in detail between the plot locations and am curious.

@Daniel #198, to keep things in perspective, you should always look at the long-term tremor plots: hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html - that makes you see how high the levels have been and how ridiculously low the tremor level is in the past few days.

@Corporal_E #194, this video has been around for a few days - certainly one of the most spectacular there are of this eruption, except for maybe one, which was shot by one of the people you see in the overflight scene (Chris Weber), one of those who were apparently too close (but survived): www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZYwpf0sARk --- And then there are the short clips and numerous extremely spectacular photos made by Martin Rietze, from the same position: www.mrietze.com/iceland10-2.htm

I also would like to know about the different frequency bands and what they imply

@202 Bom dia Renato! Tudo bem? Who knows what the future holds for us all, eh? I remember living in Brasil from 89-92, and because of the economics of Collor, at lot of people thought that economic armageddon was coming. Remember Cruzados Novos, Cruzeiros, frozen bank accounts, and everything else, cause I sure do. However, the human race is pretty darn efficient at screwing everything in the world. Wars, environmental disasters, genocide, and a lack of good Saturday morning cartoons in the US. It adds up to insanity!

Either way, I just want the clouds gone from the cams! :)

@birdseye #203, the different colors in the tremor plots correspond to different frequency ranges - very much like audible noise, volcanic tremor has different frequencies. High frequency range (blue) would correspond to extremely loud, hissing degassing, whereas the middle range (green) is what often accompanies Strombolian activity and the lower (blue) range is deeper, rumbling noise (for example of lava fountains). We've recently done work on volcanic tremor and different styles of eruptive activity at Etna, and the resulting paper is this: Behncke, Falsaperla, and Pecora, "Complex magma dynamics at Mount Etna revealed by seismic, thermal and volcanological data", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 114, B03211, dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008JB005882

You should try and download this from the Earth Prints web site of the INGV, if you're registered that shouldn't be a problem:

http://www.earth-prints.org/handle/2122/5293

#189: I cann't watch that video: " this video cannot be streamed outside Canada"... duh!

@Boris #204 The shock waves on the link you provided are fantastic. I had not seen that one yet. I've been on here for weeks and weeks, but it is hard to keep up with everything with four kids, and a job LOL. My only real contribution to this Blog was I was one of the first people on here to notice the great crack on the Thoro and Voda cams way back when it just started to become noticeable. Besides that, I have to thank you, and all of the people on here with real knowledge. My only skills are that I have a very fast mouse finger for re-loading web pages, my addiction to this volcano, and I kick butt at laser tag :). Many, many thanks for all of the awesome information and links, and everything else you all do! My kids are all now addicted to this volcano with me!!!!

Smithsonian geologist puts EyjafjallajÃ¶kull eruption in perspective

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8965YViiPo

#209 @Corporal: Falou e disse! I don't think we'll be able to see much from Eyja on the next few days. Weather forecast is bad. But it's nice to drop by and say hello to you people! Have a nice day!!!

#211 @Renato: A clima do Iceland e muito mal mesmo! Para nos que olhamos Eyjaf cada dia, a clima e triste nao e?

Hope you have a great day too!

#210, Dan: I like that one!!

@Boris207 Thank you for the explanation - about Quarternary geomorph terminology I know a little, about seismics, nada! Appreciate the link - so far I can't open it (after registration, 'you do not have authorizatioon..') but have sent a message to the site administrator...

@birdseye #214 in the worst case I can send you the pdf via e-mail, if you send your e-mail to boris.behncke@ct.ingv.it

@Boris

Ah, now i see it. I retract my earlier post as I have to agree with you that the tremors are on a ridiculously low level at the moment.

Think how clear everything gets when put in perspective. ;-)

Re #210 Aww, the poor geologist! She did a great job but towards the end, she made an abysmal mistake - she used the "S-word" to describe Yellowstone. Is she now in danger of losing her job? ;) ;)

One thing leads to another - Smithsonian link leads to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVwx8GoEhZE&NR=1
which has probably been posted before, but spends quite a lot of time over the glacier - it's a LOT more ice than it looks from Thoro cam! Hall of the Mountain King, some of our 'steam holes'.....

How weird. I recall exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard of the Challenger explosion, but I have absolutely no recollection of the same for St. Helens. I have a vague recall of pictures on the telly, but that's all.

Looks like there's ash or ashy rain falling onto MÃºlakot airfield.

Hum... Ash falling in ReykjavÃk, quoth the radio. 318Âµg/mÂ³.

Mulakot - yes, ash or dirty rain, on the multi-frame access site http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html you can see it on the building siding... it was clean the other day.

a friend went to Eyja (maybe Thorolfsfell?) and took these pictures -
http://www.bjarkifriis.myphotoalbum.com/slideshow.php?set_albumName=alb…

Also look underneath the tire swings. You can see circles where the ash hasn't fallen.

Articles < Seismicity < Icelandic Meteorological office

Go to site map.

Eruption in Iceland - frequently asked questions
Forecast for volcanic ashfall in Iceland
Ashfall forecast in Iceland - Tuesday 18 May 2010 10:00

Forecast for 18 - 22 May:

Tuesday (18 May): Looks like a ash fall north and northwest of the eruption.

Wednesday and Thursday (19 and 20 May): Ash will likely fall north of the eruption.

Friday and Saturday (21 and 22 May): Looks like light variable wind and the direction of the ash is uncertain.

@Reynir (#219) Curiously I had the same problem. It was during my honeymoon and I was on the other side of the world. Must have been distracted. :-D

#223: Some of the images certainly look like they were taken from there. Those one-second exposures do put an interesting face on things.

#225: Yeah, I can imagine that to be rather distracting.

Way OT: Can anyone imagine why I would have liked to see John Walker's Dumb Interpretively Evaluated String Expression Language (a small embeddable macro language) in Borland's budget series?

Corporal-E #150, I didn't see anyone answer your question. I thought the article didn't say much and as far as mentioning Yellowstone having many calderas, well, right now it only has one over the hot spot to my knowledge. I also don't consider the islands of the Pacific part of the US as such and I think there are a lot more volcanoes than they are saying in the article that are not doing anything and the geologists don't expect them to, either. There are quite a few cinder cones and I wouldn't be surpised if any of them came alive some day. I know most of them are supposed to be "extinct" and I don't believe any volcano is truely extinct. Dormant, yes. Extinct? Maybe. I just think a volcano can come alive at any time. After all, Chaiten hadn't erupted for 9000yrs, so that says something to me. I think we are going to see more volcanoes erupt that have been quiet for a long time. Just a hunch and I could be wrong.

Reynir#228 Huh?

Vodafone-cam back!
Not too much to see thanks to the ash, but still.

@Reynir #228 - Wha ?

Borland's original and budget series of programming languages was known as the Turbo languages, beginning with Turbo Pascal.

The languages name I gave collapses into the acronym DIESEL.

Thus, we would have had Turbo Diesel.

@Lavendel ~ Thanks~ Helen will be happy to know her arch is still intact. :)

@lavendal. re 208 and beedragon's post 189. Don't feel bad - that video stream's not working for me IN Canada either.

@Reynir ~ Aha it all makes sense now. ;)

Anybody else notice that rocks seem to be disappearing from the ledge on the Thorolfsfell cam? Maybe I'm going crazy but I could have sworn there were more rocks there before.

@Reynir ~ I just tossed my Turbo C floppies in the garbage last week hehe Sad eh?

I still have mine. Sadder, na?

@Janet, I think it's just optics. A thick layer of ash fell on the ledge and the light is only reflecting off the taller rocks where the ash has blown off them. Does that make sense?

@Frito....Yes, that makes perfect sense. I feel better. Gotta look out for those rock bandits ya know! LOL! :o)

How addicted am I that I'm noticing the Rocks?!?

@Boris (#207) Have I understood this correctly? GOD, being the closest, picks up all three - gas (blue), strombolian (green) and lava fountains (red) - almost equally well, whereas HVO & HAU, being the farthest, pick up the lower frequencies - strombolian and hawaiian - much better than the relatively speaking higher frequencies caused by gas?

Through which medium do these stations pick up sound, rock or air?

@Alistair That's too bad that you can't see the video, even with being in Canada. I just tried it again and it works for me.

I did email CBC to see if they have a way for internationals to view the show, but I'm not going to be holding my breath waiting for an answer.

birdseyeUSA @218, Thats a cracking video. It's the first one I've seen that really shows the scale of the glacier and the damage done to it. It also shows the drop from the top of the glacier to the sandur, which is about 800m, going by the 1:50,000 map posted a wee while back.

It also shows the melting progression since 19 April on the following link
http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/iceland/eyafallajokull_20100419-…

"a wee while back" ; A good Scottish phrase meaning some time ago, but not so long it can't be remembered.

@Janet (#237, 241), Princess Frito Lay, Hero of the Day (#240). Have you considered the possibility that Icelandic culture, due to Iceland's long period of cultural isolation ~1000 - 1940, may still retain the primitive element of picking up mementos - such as rocks - with which you build cairns on your dwelling, a sort of diary of your life and journeys? Naturally, the smaller and thus more easily carried rocks will be preferred, leaving the larger specimens behind.

:tongue-firmly-in-cheek:

@ Diane N CA #229 Thanks for responding. And I agree with you that we are going to see many more. I just can't stand it when the mainstream media acts like they know more than the real professionals, in this case, the volcanologists. The idea that Mt. Pagan in the middle of the Pacific is more dangerous than Mt. Hood strikes me as odd. However, since Eyjaf is on the news so much, I guess it is easy to get paid to write anything on any volcano right now.

@Birdseye (#223) I'd guess the village is HvolsvÃ¶llur; the closer volcano pictures are certainly from Thorolfsfell.

Gordon @244 I had a look at the photo's good to be reminded what it looked like. I went to 14th April and they have a great photo showing the split boulder up close I was amazed at how much lower the lake bed was then. I know it has got higher as it is now upto the semi-circle grooves in bottom of boulder but had forgotten how low it once was. Thank you :)

New report/update from the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Institute of Earth Sciences:

http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Eyjafjallajokull_status_2010-05-18_IES_IMO…

Clearly, the eruption is still going strong, even though we can't see it on the webcams (sadly).

It says they are estimating the eruption to emit about 200 tons / second. Isn't that a bit higher than previous estimates?

@Gordon 244, Och aye, and the helicopter for scale drives home the point! [ sorry, couldn't resist, used to play in a pipe band, oh horrors : ) ]
@Kultsi, yes, they had a meal in HvolsvÃ¶llur - in case anyone wants other good geology-related photos ( & some not) they are at http://bjarki-iceland.blogspot.com/ and http://bjarki-sirius.blogspot.com/

Corporal-E, the media just wants a story and sometimes anything will do if it sounds good. Of course, it depends on who is reading if it sounds good.

If I was picking the ones to be watching, (Passerby, I haven't been to the site you told me about yet) it would be all of the Cascadian volcanoes, Redoubt, ST. Augustine, and any of the others in the Cook Inlet area, Long Valley with Mammoth Mt. on the rim, the China Lake, CA area; possibly Mt. St. Helena in the upper Napa Valley, CA; Yellowstone, the basalt flows in Idaho which erupted ~2000 years ago and I would include the three mountains out there where Craters of the Moon park is located, Medicine Lake, and any of the cinder cones in Nevada and Arizona that may decide to erupt again. The Sutter Buttes in the northern part of Sacramento Valley are very old as in millions of years, but I just don't think they are dead just yet. They might be because of the way CA is formed, but there are volcanoes here that people don't know about.

If the Juan de Fucca plate moves with a mag. 7+ that will create a big mess. The Cascadia subducion zone is dangerous. So it just remains to be seen what will happen next. Just about anything.

@Henrik #245 ~ From what I've heard about Iceland's economy, I'm thinking it's more likely we'll see them on eBay ;)

Kidding! (sort of)

Totally OT: I just received my first picture of the Haitian boy I'm putting through school. What a HUGE smile he has! :) He wants to be an engineer. Just had to share that with y'all. :) *Runs for the tissue box*

@Janet ~ The flash on the Porosv cam drains my memory so until Mila gets it fixed we're all counting on you to be on Rock Bandit watch ;)

Princess Frito, I have a pen that is filled with Mt. St. Helens ash so they could do that, too. And in Italy, when Etna is erupting, guides make ash trays out of the lava flows for tourists. They have a thing they use to get the lava out of the flow and pour it in a mold. I have a feeling somebody will probably try to sell vials of Eyjaf ash. Right now it is a pain in the kazoo, but they may do someting with it. What else is there? LOL

@ Diane N CA: The media will indeed do anything it can to make a buck (hmm, sounds like the Oil people). Anyway, until Eyjaf started erupting, I was always an avid EQ watcher. For the last ten years I would go to the USGS site daily, and record the total US and World quakes daily. A few years ago I started adding Solar weather info (spots, sotrms, and filaments) to correlate some of my amateur findings.

The Juan de Fuca plate is in my amateur opinion that greatest threat to the US. The bevy of volcanoes in that region will not be so quiet when that plate goes again. It is almost indentical to the same one that caused the tsunami in the Indian ocean. Even has simliar strees points.

Eyjaf however has almost completely suckered me in. Watching quakes on a grid map is no way as exciting as watching lava bombs!

@HRH Diane ~ A pen? That's it? You're a Queen! All you have to say is "bring the whole volcano to me!"

@Frito #253 ~ You can count on me! ;) hehe

So I went on a hunt...low and behold! It's on Ebay! Ash for sale, ash for sale...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Iceland-Ash-Icelandic-Volcano-Eyjafjallajokull-volc…

@HRH Diane #254 ~ They've been selling Eyja Ash for weeks now:

http://nammi.is/icelandic-volcano-ash-c-175_429.html

Hi to all ! Just to say that the Voda Cam is back up !

@Janet #257 ~ Isn't that pathetic? People are still waiting for food rations and shelter in Haiti and there are people willing to waste their money on ash and Lava Bars (oooh chocolate! Ok they do look delish, but geez!)

#254 Diane:
Eya's ash is already on sale *s* : http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0…

At least it is for a good cause.

Princess Frito, my DH had it and he gave it to me. I want to go up there and see it for myself. Of course, being the rockhound that I am, I wouldn't mind getting a chunk of rock from Eyjaf.

When I was in Oregon with my DH, we took pictures of the cinder cone in the park, I forgot the name of it, and I went to the headquarters and asked if they had a sample of the basalt there that I could purchase from them and they gave me a chunk. I knew I had better not take any from the cinder cone area.

When I was in North Dak, I went through a museum there and they had some of the red scoria in the garden outside and I asked if I could purchase a chunk of that. They looked at me kind of funny and told me to just go pick out a chunk. So I have some of that in my collection, too. They have so much of that in ND that they use it like crushed rock for their driveways. It forms there from lighting hitting a coal vein and setting it on fire. The coal gets cooked into the red scoria. The piece I have shows the red and the black where it didn't all turn red.

Ah, rocks rocks rocks. Sometimes I think I have rocks in my head. LOL Been a rockhound since I was able to pick them up.

@Corporal_E [255]

"...(hmm, sounds like the Oil people)..."

Don't forget Pharma, Congress Critters, Goldman Sachs, BofA, AIG, Gen Mot, Chrysler, Fannie/Freddie... the list goes on.

BUT, with regards to the Juan de Fuca, don't forget 13,211 ft Mt Ranier that last erupted in 1894. It's been sitting there percolating volcanic gases up through it's summit now for several years... slowly altering it's hard brittle rock into soft clays.

geology.gsapubs.org/content/25/6/559.abstract

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Rainier/Lahars/Historical/description_osceola.html

All it would need is a good shaking and you get a sizable lahar headed towards Seattle... which is built on ancient lahar deposits. And, if it's a Cascadia quake that causes it, I'm pretty sure they will already be franticly dealing with the Tsunami that it causes, only to have the lahar bearing down on them a few hours later.

Yep... gonna be a mess when it happens.

I have some sugar white beach sand I can trade. :) (available while it lasts) :(

@Holger (#249) It is rather confusing when you read reports and one day it's given as 80 m3 s-1, the next 200 tons which is the same amount as 1m3 weighs approximately 2Â½ tons.

Since Eyja erupted I now seem to have an overstock of dust bunnies that might be worth something.

@ Dan, Florida [264]

"I have some sugar white beach sand I can trade. :) (available while it lasts) :("

Well, there is always Tarpon fishing in the Bay of Campeche. A lot of sport fishing opportunities there.

In 1979 an exploratory well (Ixtoc I) blew out and poured 3 to 3.5 million barrels (126,000,000 to 147,000,000 gallons) of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.

At 5000 barrels a day (depending on who's numbers you use) it will take about 600 days to reach that level of spill.

I'd say that the Bay of Campeche has recovered fairly well with all the Tarpon fishing opportunities there...

@266Princess etc. etc. - LOL, wanna trade?
@262DianeNCa Maybe we should get a big e-bowl and all put a sample of rock-from-interesting-spots in for a grab-bag. Shatter-cones from Brazil?

@Lurking #263 The list does go on and on and on and on.

Two years ago I went to Portland for work (I'm in Michigan btw), and I was just absolutely freaked out by Mt. Hood looming over the city. The second day in Portland, there was a very small quake while I was standing outside looking at Hood. I am an airborne army veteran, and there is not much that is man-made that spooks me, but the third day I got to go up to Mt. St. Helens. Talk about 'WOW'! Short of a nuke, there is nothing as powerful as Mother Nature.

I hope that Mt. Rainier, Hood, and the rest sleep peacefully for years to come. However, the subduction zone there will not stay quiet forever, and will probably go soomer than later. When that day comes, the Northwest US will be in for a rough time.

For now, I am very content to live here in my realitively seismically quiet area of Michigan and watch the cams of Iceland!

FYI, more EQ activity at Bardabunga. For the experts on here, is the recent EQ activity at that location normal?

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#v…

I agree there are a lot of journalists who sensationalize stories to the point that their value isn't much greater than belly lint, but...

It was one truly wonderful Canadian journalist who took her own personal time on Monday to drive a Haitian boy to a high school to enroll him for me.

There are duds and heroes in every profession.

@Gijs de Reyke #181 Isn't it a beautiful spot? I was especially drawn to their activity "Hiking trip: Energy night in Icelandic nature":

A walk from FagrahlÃÃ° and down to the lower part of the land FagrahlÃÃ° is on. From there we walk towards Eyjafjallaglacier and MÃ½rdalsglacier. People will do energy exercises and connect with the nature. Bonfire will be lit and people will form a circle around the bonfire where each and everyone will tell what is on his/hers mind at that time. This is a trip of the moment where one will feel the Power of Now in the pure Icelandic nature.

It's like what we do here every night on this blog, except there's better maid service ;)

@Corporal_E {269}

"...For now, I am very content to live here in my realitively seismically quiet area of Michigan..."

You can run but you can't hide.

You ever notice that Oklahoma City has quakes every now and then?

Funny that they all occur near the end of the Nemaha Ridge which arcs up through Kansas and into Nebraska. The Ridge roughly follows the eastern edge of the Mid Continent Rift that terminates slap dab in the at the tip of the southern end of the Central Kansa Uplift on the edge of the Ogalla formation (that aquifer thing). The Mid Continent Rift then arcs up through the bottom of Lake superior and down into the northern part of Michigan.

Granted, it really hasn't been a player since about 1.1 billion years ago... but it's still there. Lurking.

@127 Frito Lay ''I found just the place earlier today: http://www.farmholidays.is/FarmDetails/651/fagrahlid''

Well, FagrahlÃÃ° in FljÃ³tshlÃÃ° looks just nice, I just liked the description of the place that says 'It is located in the powerful triangle of the volcanoes Hekla, Katla, and Westman Islands'. However, couple months ago I already booked a room in Hotel Hekla for July 2010 :) (http://www.hotelhekla.is) I just hope it is still there by that time... Ok ok, I'm not panicking.

@birdseyeUSA #268 - I'm thinking no ;)

@Corporal_E - Who knew that we're sitting on this flat, boring, prairie-like powder keg of volcanic activity? 1.1 billion years ago? OMG we are sooo overdue!

Where's my suitcase ...

@Alina #274 ~ Hotel Hekla looks equally wonderful and would certainly accommodate a large group like us. (You did tell them to expect +6000 people, right? ;)

Curious question, how do you estimate tephra volume of an eruption (I guess that lava volume is easier to estimate)?

I don't want to scare you, but nukes are rather feeble when compared with what Mother Nature can throw at us. When you compute the potential damage of a nuclear blast, there's one figure labelled "R50" ("50" in lower case). It's interpreted as the radius (R), or distance from ground zero, where you have a 50% chance of surviving outside of a proper shelter. For a Hiroshima-sized fission device, the R50 is just under a mile (1.5km). At around ten miles, you'll find the R50 of a regular thermonuclear device (hydrogen bomb) of about 2Mt (100x more powerful than "Little Boy"). Even the most powerful device ever detonated by mankind, the CCCP "Tzar" of ~50Mt, has an R50 of "no more" than about 50 miles.

It might be of interest to note that the reason the average (late) Cold War USSR warhead was many times more powerful than corresponding US ones was due to their much lower precision when used against hardened targets such as missile silos or command centers (Norad). Whereas US warheads would hit within 50m of the desired ground zero, the USSR could only achieve an accuracy of 250m. Ergo, they required warheads 25 times more powerful in order to achieve the same result. Since we're on the subject, First Strike capability - the ability to knock out the enemy's missiles before he (or she!) can fire them - is directed at the opponent's launch sites and command centres. Second strike capability - the ability to fire missiles after you have been hit yourself - is directed against your opponents cities and infrastructure to ensure that even if you "lose" the nuclear exchange, your opponent has been obliterated too. With Second Strike, an accuracy of 50m or 250m is totally irrelevant whereas it's absolutely vital if you want to achieve First Strike capability. The boomer (Ballistic missile submarine) killed the concept of a "winnable" Nuclear war as it guarantees Second Strike capability, i.e. there is no such thing as a "Stategic First Strike".

I digress. It's easily realised that Mount St Helens May 18th 1980 eruption was far more powerful than any fission device or that a bomb such as the Soviet "Tzar" is a harmless firecracker when compared to the damage potential of a Lake Toba or Lake Taupo.

@Lurking {273} "You can run but you can't hide".

You are absolutely correct. When the New Madrid fault line last went active in the 1800's, the quakes were felt in Michigan, and supposedly, some of the lakes here churned and bubbled.

There have been a few quakes here at times, but there is a huge differnce between the West coast of the US and Michigan. Instead of EQ's, volcanoes, and other natural disasters, we have Detroit! They say that the unofficial unemployment rate here is actually 50% (Officially around 30%), crime is rampant, cops are shooting kids, murder is up, education is down, and we are now also called the New Ghost Town of the US! This article with pictures is one of hundreds online:

http://www.pamil-visions.net/american-ghost-towns-detroit/28401/

(Actually, I think a big EQ might help the area. It sure as hell can't hurt)

Paranormal activity @ the mulakot webcam! ;-)

I saw that too Steven.. about the most intereting thing from that cam all day. lol

Isn't it great that we can visit a blog thread about an Icelandic volcano and read about American politics, American weather ,American oil spills and now American volcanoes.

God Bless America.

@ Henrik #278: Very true. However you are considering sides of political states. If you add up all of the ridiculous amounts of nukes from all of the countries on the planet, you get an amazingly disgusting amount of power. Granted, this power is nothing when compared to an asteroid or comet impact (which is still Mother Nature, right?). Isn't there still over 20,000 nukes on the planet when you add up all of the stockpiles from around the world?

Another way to look at it, is how many nukes do you think is still pointed at Washington DC? 5, 8, 10? Or at Moscow? Russia still has over 12,000 of those things. Either country has enough to destroy the planet.

Personally, I think that sucks. We should not have the power to be almost as strong as Mother Nature.

@Kaboom 282: To be fair, this is a generic thread and also includes Mt. St. Helens, which is an American volcano.

So, the first part of your statement is incorrect - this isn't a thread about an Icelandic volcano (at least, not exclusively).

@Steven ~ It's a Rorschach test. They've finally brought in the shrinks to learn why we spend so much time staring at out-of-focus, fog-laden, cloud-laden web cams.

I'll go first! Bat. Or butterfly. No! Moth!

It was meant in a positive context. Thats your negativity not mine.

FYI, if you happen to be in the Seattle area, I'll be on KIRO radio talking Cascade volcanoes sometime later this afternoon.

#282 @Kaboom: My only other reference point would be Brasil, where I lived for years. No volcanoes there, so nothing much about that location. With the Mt. St. Helens anniversary here, any talk about that volcano or her neighbors would be expected, wouldn't it?

A few posts about other topics did not really hurt anything did it?

Personally, I love learning from the posters on here about Mt. Etna, besides Eyjaf. And to get back onto Iceland volcanic activity, can anyone answer my question #270. Is this type of activity normal:

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#v…

Hiya-- been watching both the volcano, the tour de california, ( also online on VS), and this thread. For years, I'd heard people compare things to a nuclear bomb. Now, luckily, I've never experienced a major blast. Recently, somehting was posted on the web that lets one see what 5 kilotons looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVM9_attO1Q

It makes comparisons more understandable.

@273 - You can run ... I was living in Sydney in the late 1980's and in 1989 Newcastle happened. I was on the beach at Bondi, a way off but still ... very exciting for me (terrible for those directly affected). My 4th earthquake (I also lived in NZ)and the thrill / shock never fails to shock / surprise you. Those events instilled a passion in me that will never go. Flying over a smoking Rhuapehu in a small plane was one of the best experiences of my life.

#289 Fantastic video! Thanks for sharing that.

#275 We should be packing our suitcases eh? That's way overdue!

@291 I think you meant to reference post #274 ;)

@Erik #288 Will it be live? KIRO radio am 710 or fm 97.3?

97.3Fm live streaming is at:

http://www.mynorthwest.com/streams/streampop_kiro.php

#288 - KIRO radio can be reached online via www.mynorthwest.com/streams/streampop_kiro.php. Will listen for your segment, Erik. Thanks for letting us know.

Erik's on live now

@Princess Frito Lay - I should know this but I really only listen to NPR, and only from my car. Anyway, it looks like it should be 97.3 as the am station is sports only now. Oh... show is starting now. Streaming version.

KIRO: "So how far is it between the magma and the napping forest ranger?" hahaha!

Gawd.

KIRO: It's all at "eruptionsblog.com".

Journalistic accuracy at its best.

That was it? A couple of soundbites?

@parclair ~ were you able to listen to it? It was at least 15 minutes long.

ref. Carla 288 Should have known - Microsoft territory - new Microsoft media player, 'silverlight' required - VLC won't work because it doesn't get the chance! Sigh.

@ hrh p. frito. Apparently not. I only got about 4 minutes, the rest was ads, one after another.

Nothing stranger than live radio interviews ...

They said they will replay it later this evening, for what its worth.

@birdseye: I use a Mac with Firefox and cannot install Silverlight on my non-Intel hardware, so I just used the Windows Media version linked beneath the Silverlight blob. WMV plays without trouble on my system via the Flip4Mac utility. I share your pain, tho. BTW, lots of Mac users at MS.

" You can run but you can't hide"

I grew up in Dunbar, on the SE coast of Scotland, and spent my life on the rock shore there. Ghosts of volcanicity rule the roost in that corner, with Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, Traprain Law, Berwick Law, and the Bass Rock all being upstanding remnants of Carboniferous volcanic activity. I doubt if any will spring to life again.

I returned there at the age of 50, 2 years ago for a return visit. The town had shrunk, but interestingly, my rocky playground stayed the same size as my memory of it. It had however morphed into a post glacial rock platform, with a number of dykes and local faulting, and the mudstones were shot through with fine quartz intrusions.

I did, of course, take rocks home for my collection

@Carla305 - thanks for the suggestion - on my computer it said it would take 2.5 hours to download flip - think I'll watch & wait here instead, & let micro win this round! ; )

#306 Has everybody been put to sleep by my last posting, or have I been caught in a time loop at the moment of posting? Or not invited to the party? According to my computer nobody has posted anything in the last 25 minutes.

Time for bed.

@gordon. Sweet dreams. My augusts were spent on the south shore of lake superior. Then, a great place. Now, wow, glaciers dig deep.

Hey, updated report @ IMO -http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and volcanism/articles/nr/1884
We're missing the show, darn it - and new pic of ash on a house - !

@lurking 264, Seattle is a bit north of Mt. Rainier's Lahar deposits. our hills are composed of various kinds of glacial till, subglacial marine deposits, glacial outwash gravels and sand and other sorts of material that tends loose its structural integrity during particularly wet winters. The futhest extent of Rainier's lahar deposits are underneath Auburn, a much smaller town to the south which once refered to itself as "little detroit of the west" on account of large number of new and used car lots. Now its economy seems to revolve around a large mall, Indian casino and a horse racing track. So while you are betting on the ponies you are also betting that the next lahar is neither too soon or too close to disturb your afternoon!

glaciers dig deep yes and when they dam large volumes of water and fail they make a huge mess look at the scab lands in in the Columbia river drainage area

@Corporal_E, no answers, but maybe later - I expect we'd have heard from JÃ³n Frimann if it were something unusual....

@Gordon #306 &308: Looking online, Bass Rock looks really cool. If you ever hear of them needing someone to work that lighthouse, let me know! The scenery would be great.

@Gordon #306 ~ Thank you for sharing your childhood memories. Whenever I return to my childhood haunts, they always seem so much bigger than I had remembered them! And I'm not even talking in a geological sense.

As a Canadian, I was always jealous of Europeans having a much richer history until I learned recently that our very own Great Lakes used to envelope the highest mountains on earth.

We always enjoy your posts. See you bright and early in the morning. :)

@ Bruce Stout #192: I've been in Scotland till the 8th, but even there I've always been able to check Eruptions Blog. Which I did, even when I was at Glencoe (the beautiful mainly rhyolitic piecemeal caldera) ^_^ . It's just that when it comes to EyjafjallajÃ¶kull I tend to sit back, relax and watch the show ;-) . Erik and many others here have great comments on this eruption and the activity seems to be relatively stable, so it's basically the only thing one can really do, I think. Only when I have the urge to post something on 'correlation and causation' or when there's something that I find of great value to add here (videos e.g.) I will crawl from under my rock to do so ;-) . Stuff like this, for example: http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/945861/1c63f52d/eyjafjallaj_klul.html

@ Daniel #193: Exactly ^_^ . Especially when there are a lot of laypeople (including mass media!) that read this blog and the comments posted here. There's enough cr@p on EyjafjallajÃ¶kull and related subjects out there already (speculations on Katla, for example) and I feel compelled to publicly facepalm at that, so to speak ;-) .

@ Frito Lay #293: it sure is! I might try to get to one of the webcams and to get some people here make a 'print screen' of it. Ofcourse I'll be holding a sign in my hand with 'Hi Eruptions Blog ^_^ !' on it or something :P . Maybe Boris can do the same on Etna one day ^_^ ?

My rock collection consists of one little rock from our cottage. Sad, I know. I'm a late-bloomer. )-:

The focus all my life until February of this year had always been things that happen above ground. Then, for some reason, I started to wonder about things beneath my feet, like tectonic plates and earthquakes. Then Haiti happened. My research then led me to volcanoes and next thing I knew, I was watching one live.

That's my life story.

Oh and somehow I got this really cool tiara along the way.

@Gijs de Reijke #316 ~ My finger is always on standby hovering over my F11 key, so whenever you're there with the sign, you will be screen-captured my friend ;)

^_|_^! <--- little ridges with a glacier in between ;)

@Erik #304 ~ You did a really great job considering KIRO was trying to suck you in like a Dyson to say doom and gloom would happen in different places within hours :)

Did they say what time the replay would be?

Bardarbunga EQ's still going on. Is that normal?

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#v…

birdseye...Try going to start, then set programs access and defaults, then custom... You may not be able to get rid of all the others, but you can block their access to your computer temporarily. I have to use vlc occasionally too.

Erik is on again - replay

http://www.mynorthwest.com/streams/streampop_kiro.php

Birdseye #269, I can add genuine Northern California serpentine to the bowl. :-) And maybe some red cider cone lava rock that I5 goes right along side. (Just so nobody saw me, LOL) Then there is always that "yellow" stuff. :-)

I suppose by this time the ink blots are gone, but I will take a look just to see what I can't see.

@321 M Randolph Kruger - you want me to get to know another part of my computer, eh, w/o frying something or losing all my Eyja pics? â½â½

@BirdseyeUSA ~ Back away from your keyboard. Sloowwwlyyy...

@ Frito Lay: I'll let you know when I expect to be there ;-) .

Cool to know btw that Erik spends most of his professional time thinking about 'mehgmeh' ^_^ . Nice interview :-D !

@Gijs de Reijke ~ Erik did an awesome job in the interview, didn't he? He really knows how to handle the media.

~ Klemetti's the name. Magma's my game. :) ~

^_~_^ is two ridges with a little steamy bit in between ;)

Every once in a while you can get a glimpse of the eruption cloud on the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell webcam. It's not a great / clear view, but at least it confirms the ongoing eruption.

@320Corporal_E If you haven't seen this yet, it will give you a better idea of what to look for at Bardabunga in terms of accelerated activity..
http://islande2010.mbnet.fr/2010/03/eyjafjallajokull-levolution-des-der…
@325 Fritoprincesshero - lol I'm so far back that I'm quitting for the night ; )
Thanks all, maybe the clouds will clear a bit for you.

What we need is an autonomous vehicle with a webcam to drive up to the edge of the caldera. It could park itself on the same ridge where those scientists were standing the other day. Then we wouldn't have to worry about clouds or fog or anything else interrupting our viewing pleasure. Someone give DARPA a ring.

@PeakVt ~ You mean something robotic to replace our beloved Gummiey Bear? ;)

http://gummiey.posterous.com/

I agree. It would be so much safer!

@Holger #328 ~ Any sign of recent rock pilfering? If so, please report to Rock Bandit Investigative Chief Janet ;)

@Gijs de Reijke #326 ~ Any chance your website will be available in English any time soon? Is that you in the video?

@320, Corporal_E: Bardarbunga, according to recent study articles, has been quite active in comparison to other volcanic centers.

Interesting to see shakes near the LangjÃ¶kull icefield. Geothermal perhaps.

@Princess Frito #332

At the moment all rocks are still accounted for. But it is clear that major losses would occur should some of the rock hounds from this forum visit the site (Diane, Randall, et al.). Fortunately, EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is producing lots of new rocks, that can be used to replace the missing ones...

@Princess Frito Lay #317 I understand how you feel. I too am fairly a late bloomer. I've always had a interest in things in the ground, but things more like arrow heads and pottery and such. Dabbled in a little archeaology in college. Started watching some shows on the TV "How the Earth was Made" and really got me interested in Geology, Volcanology and the formation of the Earth and how the tectonic plates effect the continents etc... For the past year started learning more and more about volcanos, earthquakes, and fault lines. Revisited my interest in rocks, started searching for different kinds with my kids. Now I have my two kids (7 and 9) totally interested in all of this stuff! Only frustration is the fact that I live in Michigan and the rocks seem to be elsewhere, unless I want a huge amount of quartz.

@330: What IES and IMO need is an unmanned aircraft for surveillance/recon missions at the crater and outlet glaciers.

Apparently, Brasil is already using them. Wonder if USGS has them, too.

Looking at the Hvols cam ... I'm thinking we should send The Man Who Lives In The House On The Hill a fruit basket. As if it weren't enough that he's lost all of his privacy during the past two months while we've all stared at his home night and day, I'm sure he's dealing with messy ash floors too.

Ok let's add a Swiffer starter pack to the deal as well. Who's in?

@332 Princess Frito ~ Darkness has once again made it near impossible to monitor the rocks. I'm afraid I'm in big trouble now that Holger has reminded me that EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is in fact producing so many new rocks. My work will never be done! :o)

With that I'm off to bed. I hope there will soon be clear viewing for everyone. G'nite.

@Princess Frito #338

I'd rather start a collection for the generous folks that run the Mila, Vodafone, and Mulakot webcams. Without their services we'd all rely solely on other sources of information, how sad would that be.

Seriously, does anybody know how we could show our gratitude to those guys? Imagine every volcano addict from this forum would send them US$ 5 (or equivalent currency). That would show them how much we like (need) their service....

@Holger #335 ~ Great surveillance and risk assessment. Nice projection on future rock output. This really lends itself nicely to a great Rock Ponzi Pyramid Multi-Level Marketing scheme. Anyone know how to open some off-shore accou...

Nevermind.

@Holger I've got money sitting in my paypal account :)

@missyland from Mi USA #336 ~ Your kids are the future geologists/volcanologists/seismologists. From what I've read, there's a treasure trove of rocks in the Great Lakes area. Just ask the experts here how to find them, and you will. :)

Looking at the Mulakot cams it looks like a fair amount of ash has descended on the area.

@ Frito Lay: I agree with you on the interview, although I think I missed the first couple of minutes :( .

The site that I usually link to is not mine. It's the site of three geographers that wrote a book on the relationship between humans and nature in all its aspects. The book mainly focuses on the risks that nature can pose to us. After they'd finished the book they decided to create a 'Community of Practice' of a relatively select number of people who are 'specialists' on subjects related to the contents of their book. The goal is to create a platform where knowledge can be shared, so the education of geography (mainly in high schools) can be improved. The site I link to is that platform.

My role in it is just being one of the 'specialists', where I confine myself to subjects related to volcanism and seismicity, in particular when it comes to these geologic processes in the region where I live (Central Europe).

The website is currently in Dutch, and I think it will remain so, because all the members are Dutch and our work is in the end meant to improve education in the Netherlands. I wouldn't mind if there would be an English section (mainly because a lot of good sources are in English), but it's not up to me to decide that ;-) .

The person that you see in the video is a professor in human geography, Dr. Ton Dietz. My face can be found under my highlighted name that is to be found under this particular comment ;-) .

@Janet, Rock Bandit Chief Investigator #339 ~ We don't pay you shift premium for the midnight shift, so don't sweat it. The rest of us will monitor the sitch overnight and let you know if we notice anything missing in the morning. ;)

@Holger #340 and #342 Beedragon ~ I think maybe Vodafone and Mila have much better budgets than those who fund the Mulakot cam (it's a flying club, no?)

I'd be willing to offer the loose change in my Paypal account to Mulakot if I'm correct.

@Gijs de Reijke #345 ~ Thank you so much for the explanation. I'm sure you and your colleagues are doing wonderful work on that site.

I think the rest of us here would be very interested in reading your contributions to that site or elsewhere in English, so please do share them with us sometime. :)

Wow, looks like the plume is blowing straight at the cams on thorolfsfell

@349 OMG You are were not kidding. The ash is totally taking up half of the screen.

@parclair ~ Quick! Check out the Vodafone cam before the view becomes obliterated as well.

For those who are link-less:

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en

Passerby @ 337: I don't know about the USGS, but NASA has a long-range autonomous UAV for atmospheric research. Of course, IMO or IES wouldn't need one as fancy.

www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/GloPac/index.html

The HeklubyggÃ°-cam also got its portion of ash.
http://www.heklubyggd.is/vedur.htm

They are going to need some Windex to clean off that lens on the Thorolfsfell cam!

Ok screw the fruit baskets and Swiffers. We need remote control cam lens squeegees. Anyone got a source?

Good morning. It's three o'clock here in Rio, Brazil, and I can't help getting up of bed to monitor this d* volcano. Since it's cloudy and ashy, I start peeping at the last threads to follow the amusing talking. And can't go back to sleep for so much laughing. So, you'd better save the money for the cams because I'll get you guys sued for my restlessness. LOL. (I'll take samples of Copacabana polluted sands when I visit you in jail).
Thank you folks. If this volcano goes off I 'll miss you SOOO much!

We need an Icelandic local to contact Mulakot Airport by phone or email to report the webcam ash-visibility issue. Please?

Hey! Who told us to look on Voda cam? And ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell? Is there something special we should know about how ash is soluble in raindrops?

Oi Renato! It's two in the morning here and I am on my way to bed finally. The Porolfsfell cam was half obscured with ash for a while. The Picasa web site is back up with mostly current pics and you can see a little bit on there. It was really cool! Anyway, must sleep. Goodnight all e boa noite!

http://picasaweb.google.com/102175391233488315229

@ Princess Frito # 355 - don't worry too much about the lens, I have a friend from Helsinki who will be visiting Eyja in the next 24hrs..... I'll make sure he takes a cleaning cloth:-)
Your rocks look cleaner, though, so it can't all be bad. Actually, the rain looks a little less ashy at the moment, maybe when it stops we'll be able to see what's happened while we've all been 'vision-deprived'.

#354 #355 Your highness? Corporal_E? Bom dia! Are you still there?

# 359 @Corporal_E : Boa noite! I might as well go back to bed. Thank you for the link! AtÃ© manhÃ£!

@Kathryn #360 - Phew! Thank you! I've only got the use of my hero cape for another 3 hours and it's already caked with volcanic ash. I don't think it would be "airworthy" without a good washing which would take at least 90 minutes of a wash and dry cycle with a good non-phosphate detergent.

It's so much easier being a simple princess. *sigh*

New post by Erik K. - he's burning the midnight oil it appears...

@Renato #358 ~ The next person who asks me to look at the Porosv cam owes me some serious RAM.

@Kathryn #360 ~ Thanks for the rock cleanliness check, Kathryn. It'll make Janet's morning inventory count go much faster. ;)

@Renato #356 ~ The threat of imprisonment doesn't scare me as much as the thought of having to listen to Barry Manilow songs for 10 to 15 years.

Drop the polluted sands and just bring quality earplugs!

#365 Glad you're safe, Your Highness. I was already thinking you were choked in ash. Just waiting to say good night. Take care of yourself. There's a Haitian boy who will need your support for a while. Till tomorrow, Hero. "Tomorrow is another day..." (Was that MacBeth's or Scarlet O' Hara's? - never mind. They're to busy cleaning off recent ash fall on Britain). Night!

@Princess Frito Lay I get so excited about the rocks that we do find, that sometimes my kids just stare at me. Most times I can get them really engaged into what the rock is and where it came from. We do find some interesting rocks, but I don't know if they are "native" to Michigan. I wish I could find a book that just had a simple picture of the rock and what it is and info...

If anyone knows of any native rocks from Michigan (other than the obvious ie. quartz and petosky) or any books that would be helpful. You would be making this mom VERY happy!!!

#366 Hahah! I'll be back within hours. I need some laughing. And the weather forecast is promising... Bye!

@Renato ~ Thank you so much for remembering :) Sleep well my friend.

<3 :)

@Missyland from Mi USA #368 ~ I'm sure you've just opened the floodgates of help since there are many kind and helpful people here. If they don't have the information themselves, they'll be sure to point you in the right direction. :)

Corporal_E is also from Michigan so she may be able to share some information with you.

#368 @Missyland from Mi USA: "The Animikie Series was named for exposures along the north shore of Lake Superior, in the Thunder Bay area (animiki is the Chippewa word for âthunderâ); Animikian rocks occur in Ontario, northern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and northeastern Minnesota. In the Port Arthur area, Animikian rocks overlie pre-Huronian metamorphic (altered) rocks; rocks of the Cobalt Series are absent. The Animikie ... From Britanicca online, search Petrology. If you want more, you'll need a free tryal. Night!
#370 I know, I should be sleeping but couldn't help trying to help a mother in need. Ok. Now it's for real! Good night everybody!

ok, so maybe I have found more rocks than I first thought. Found a website that told about the rocks here. We have found most of them. I guess I just thought that my idenitifcations couldn't be correct.

@Renato and Frito Lay Thanks so much!!!

Excited to keep on learning.

@Renato #372 ~ You're too sweet. Thank you.

@missyland from Mi USA ~ I think the more you research, the more you'll find that you've found a lot more! :) Do take a trip up around Lake Huron this summer if you can. Go around the north of Lake Superior if that's possible for you. You'll be amazed. :)

@Kathryn #360 ~ Approx. what time will your friend be visiting?

Honestly, I don't think the weather will be clear enough for him to visit Eyja but if he does, please be sure to give us, say, a two hour warning so we can watch for him with our fingers poised on the F11 key to capture it ;)

@ Princess Frito - not sure what his exact timing is... I'll need to check. I've warned him that he will be on Candid Camera and we require a polite wave!
He will need to stay there a few days to get a clear view - hope he's packed adequate supplies....

Hi, IMO's report say that low frequency tremor has sligthly decreased:

IMO Status Report: 17:00 GMT, 18 May 2010
"Volcanic tremor is similar to that of the last few days, although the low
frequency has slightly decreased during the last days."

If you watch the trend of graph only HVO seems to me picking up decresing red 0-1 Hz (mostly) and green 1-2 Hz.
HVO is furthest away of stations from EyjafjallajÃ¶kul even other side (east) of MyrdalsjÃ¶kull.
Have anyone ideas why only HVO?

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

@Kathryn - I know we all love to see visitors waving at us on the cams we've been glued to for the past several weeks, but I'm sure we all also want to know that visitors are taking the proper precautions to protect themselves, even if it's simply wearing proper masks on a "clear day" to protect their breathing passages. I hope your friend is well-advised and equipped during his visit. :)

The ash cloud is up close and personal on the Vodafone cam now.

Sorry! I ment HVO tremor is INCREASING no decreasing in my post 378 (but IMO reports decreasing)

@Timo, #378.

As Boris pointed out the other day it is important to put things in perspective. If you look at this chart http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html you can see that the tremors since the eruption started is on a minimal level, almost non existant even.

Daniel, #382

I agree your's and Boris point to understand of perspective.

I know that all tremors has been few days quite low lewel.
My point is that all the 6 stations tremor trend has been very similar from the begin, all most like in "sync" until yesterday morning 09.
After that point the HVO red and green has been going up and other stations tremor graphs are more stable.

That is quite special change at least to me.

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

I agree that there is probably something happening since that station in particular is showing signs of NOT following the trend of the other stations. If I am not mistaken the HVO tation is located closer to Katla? I am not implying that Katla will erupt but still, it is an interesting turn of events. Lets see if it continues to climb or if it is just a "hickup". :-)

Look at the Snaebyli (snb) station that is to the east of Katla. Big change there.

Daniel, #384

You can find all stations from this map I found from net:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=16409566&postcount=1858

From the map you can see that HVO is quite near of RUV's Katla Web cam in Hafell.
Yes, perhaps the change of the trend means nothing, but lets see few more hours how it will behave.
Any way it is interesting change.

http://www.ruv.is/katla/

"HÃ¡fell is about 9 km east of Vik in MÃ½rdal,
just above the road and is almost 300 m high.
Top of the mountain is a temple and tower owned distribution network RÃV.
A few years ago was placed cameras to monitor the volcano Katla which is
the east side measurements in 23 km distance you can see very well from HÃ¡felli."

@Boris Behncke or anyone who knows!

If you have a few minutes to look at the tremorcharts. Both small scale and big scale. http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html

All stations but HVO shows no significant chages. If any the tremors are declining.

HVO is located SE of Katla and way far East of EF.

The tremors is climbing steadily. Still a relatively small increase but still steadily rising. What could cause this? If it were tremors from EF then wouldnt ESK station pick up even stronger signals?

I am bound to agree with Timo that it looks very strange.

#387 & #386
Look at #385. You can find the station (snb) on the map that is at the Icelandic Met Office under Tremor Measurements. It is just to the east of Katla.

HVO's tremor ampiltyde scale (0-35) is now too small and the red one 0-1 Hz and green one 1-2 Hz has switched place. Also the blue is now coming a little bit up. The other one's still stable - strange in deed...

Do we have same kind of 10-minute median-averged graphs like HVO for Snaebyli (snb) station?

I found only the long period graph 11->19.5

SNB seems to be following the same increase pattern as HVO station.

Has anybody checked out the weather near HVO station?
Wind, rain, ashfall, etc.

Well at 12:00 local time the wind was at about 3m/s so that would not have any impact.

And if rain or ashfall would affect the seismograph it would probably some serious rain. :-)

@392: it could also be due to very local effects, maybe exacerbated by the sensitivity of the seismometer. Or perhaps continuous cultural noise (but in this case I would expect it to be more irregular). I doubt it's something from the currently erupting volcano or under Myrdalsjokull, though.

By the way, HVO station is located very close to a glacier river:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/Myrdalsjokull.jpg
Maybe the increased average seismic signal is due to additional water flow than usual?

Too bad we don't have public access to raw seismic data from the icelandic seismic network.

I was trying to find GPS data from AUST and ENTA (on Myrdalsjokull) stations from net with no good luck.
What I found was few interesting links. The first is rather scientific and interesting pdf file

http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~mtg/pdf/Jokull49_HBetal_Myrdalsjokull.pdf

http://www2.norvol.hi.is/page/ies_katlamonitoring

@393: Yes that was my first thought also but that would been visible as a sharp peak and an elevated continous tremor level wouldnt it? This one seems to increase more and more as time passes which would indicate (if you look at the scenarious you pointed out) that the cultural noise would either grow louder and louder (or closer and closer).
And if the waterflow was the case then it would mean it was increasing by the minute and that would be a very interesting scenario as something needs to melt it.

All we can do is speculate and wait but still..It is interesting. :-)

Swarm of Earthquakes near KrÃ½suvÃk, whats happening there?

Erik has a new blog now. Everyone has moved there.

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/05/more_on_eyjafjallajokull_and_…

#368 & #371 My daughter has a great book on Rocks, "Lake Michigan Rock Pickers Guide". Whenever we go up north we always have it with us to look for cool new rocks. She has a piece of Blue Chert which is her favorite rock. My wife's family have a great big hunk of land in Mid Michigan, so we go looking whenever we can.

Now on to the new blog

A cat may never distinguish merriment but must e'er appear sympathy for the barn

Thanks for this great post! It has been extremely insightful. I hope that you will continue posting your knowledge with us.

Memories of Mount St. Helens on the 30th Anniversary (1980-2010): Part 1

eklemetti — Mon, 17 May 2010 07:26:15 +0000

Memories of Mount St. Helens on the 30th Anniversary (1980-2010): Part 1

May 18, 2010 marks the 30th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Now, rather than recount the event when the USGS and the Cascade Volcano Observatory have done such an excellent job, I turn it over to all the Eruptions readers and their memories of the eruption.

Now, as I've mentioned, I was all of three years old when St. Helens erupted in 1980, so I have no distinct memories of the eruption. My mother has mentioned that she watched the TV coverage with me and my sister, who had been born a two months earlier. However, the real memories of St. Helens I have come later, when I was maybe 9-10 and I received a pack of posters - mostly science-related - and the famous sequence of the eruption was one of them. I don't know how much time I spent of the next, well, many years staring at the poster, trying to figure out the exact sequence of events. Needless to say, when I finally read about the eruption, it seemed very familiar!

So, without further ado, I turn it over to all of you. Thank you to everyone for submitting your recollections of the eruption! This is Part 1 of 2 (you all have a lot to say), so check in tomorrow for Part 2.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mount St. Helens erupting in 1980. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

RW
I lived in Washington state north of Seattle near a town called Mt. Vernon. As a hiker I had often been in the area of St Helens and camped. Prior to the main eruption the mountain had 'warmed up' for a time. I have some photos of this while the mountain was spewing but still mostly intact.

The Thursday before the eruption I had traveled from my home with intentions of camping north of the mountain and taking more photos. The weather turned cloudy so I stayed with some friends in Seattle, thinking photos might not work out.- We went on a bender that Friday night thus Saturday morning I was feeling a bit hung-over. The weather had not cleared and I then decided to bag it and head for home.

Sunday morning at about 9 AM a knock on my door and my neighbor exclaiming "Did you Hear IT? St Helens blew up!" After watching the TV I discovered I had missed the photos and sight of my life in not continuing my trip. The day had dawned remarkably clear at that too.

John H. McDonald
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Delaware
I was an undergrad at the University of Washington in spring 1980. Mt. St. Helens had been emitting steam and small amounts of ash for a few weeks, so some friends and I from the dorm decided to head down there to see it. Our floor's resident assistant made it an official dorm activity, checked out a university van, and we drove down there one morning. We drove up the Spirit Lake highway, but found that when we got to the roadblock marking the restricted "Red Zone," our view of the mountain was partially obscured. We turned off the main highway onto a logging road and found another logging road that paralleled the main highway but wasn't blocked. We were able to get a couple miles closer to the mountain, and had an excellent view of Mt. St. Helens with a wisp of steam coming from its top and a dusting of gray ash on its snow-covered sides. We spent the day picnicking, hiking around, and taking lots of pictures.

There had been no one at the roadblock area when we drove up in the morning, but by the time we got back in the afternoon, there were lots of other volcano tourists there. Parked cars blocked our way from the logging road back to the main highway. We pulled up, not knowing what to do, when a pot- bellied, mirror-shades-wearing, state trooper started to swagger over to our van. We were sure we were in big trouble--we'd snuck into the Red Zone and were facing huge fines! Maybe jail time! An arrest record that would keep us from ever getting a good job!

The 20-year-old resident assistant, who looked several years younger, nervously rolled down the driver's window, prepared for the worst. The state trooper got to the side of the van, looked down to where it said "University of Washington--For OFFICIAL Use Only", and said "We'll get these cars moved out of your way in just a second." He went off to boss around some mere tourists, getting them to move their completely unofficial cars, and we drove back to Seattle.

That was May 17. At 8:28 the next morning, the place we'd had our picnic, and the roadblock on the Spirit Lake highway, were buried under a rapidly moving wall of mud, ash, and logs.

Diane
I was 30 so I remember quite a bit. :-) It was a Sunday and it blew big time. I remember the two weeks before it happened they were trying to get people out of there and having a hard time doing it. Old Harry Truman refused to leave. He was 83 and I guess he figured he would not be able to start over if he lost his cabin and the beautiful Spirit Lake he lived on. He loved "his" mountain and "his" lake and in a way, I don't blame him for going with the mountain he loved. If he had been 23, that would have been a different story.

I was taking electron microscopy at the time and was there ever a lot of buzz at school over that. I had a shirt that I got from Mt. Lassen that I had worn the week before and it was in the wash or I would have worn it the day after. It said "Go Climb A Volcano." LOL I should have worn it anyway. I did a few days later, but it didn't have the impact it would have if I had worn it on that Monday.

I was very sorry for the loss of the geologist (was it Johnson) who thought he was far enough away to be safe. It was a great loss for the geological community. There were others that thought they were far enough away also and some did not make it. One couple did manage to get out and they watched as the side of the mountain slid down and then the blast. They have said it was as frightening as it could get.

Later that year, a friend of mine and I went to D.C. and the day we went to the National Art Gallery, I wore that shirt. One of the guards took a look at that and read it and just shook his head. "Go climb a volcano," he said with a bit of "huh?!" in his voice. He was not for that at all. I told him I had been on Lassen and he wasn't for that, either. It was a bit comical for us.

As I have watched the films over the years, it almost seems like it was yesterday and yet soooo long ago. My brother was in the auto parts business at the time (he took over from Dad, sort of) and they could not get any air filters. They were all going up to Washington, Oregon and any place else where the ash was. I remember seeing places that looked like night. Ash was everywhere and went as far as western Montana.

At the time, I thought about the power of a volcano and how it can disrupt everything and the lives lost. I think that was the worst part of it for me was the loss of life. I think sometimes we people just have to challenge nature and take too much risk. I observed that many of the people that were camping in the area seemed to think it was not going to blow or didn't realize how powerful it was going to be. I remember seeing the pictures and films of the lahar and how devastating that was to the environment. I remember the trees blasted over like matchsticks and the rock that was blasted out all over the landscape. The Tuttle River and Spirit Lake disappeared. The river has come back in a way, but the lake is gone.

Another thing that has been found in the area is the beginning of fossilization. You would think it would take thousands of years, but it has begun in less than 30 years. That is amazing. Flowers are blooming, and things are beginning to come back, but it will never be the same again. Yet, even with the devastation, there is a certain beauty there and it is an interesting place to visit and someday I hope to be able to see it in person.

It was scary, it was awesome, it was the kind of event that makes you think of what we are here for and how insignificant we can be compared to such a force as a volcano. I know we have gained a lot of knowledge by studying the films, the effects, the composition of the blast materials, and how far reaching a volcano can affect people, our way of life, and the environment.

It is almost like a dream and as if it never happened. It did and it could again. That is what is hard for us to remember. It can happen again.

Mount St. Helens, 1980. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Robert Somerville
I was living on acreage in the lower mainland of B.C. (Maple Ridge). I was woken up by the sound, which was apparently refracted by an atmospheric inversion from St. Helens to B.C. I was reading somewhere that the sound was the noise of the crypto-dome hitting Spirit Lake. Several of my working buddies also heard it. I thought somebody was blasting stumps not too far away.

GT McCoy
I was living in the Richland WA Area at the time, we didn't get hit much by the ashcloud, but it looked like the scene out of De Mille's "Ten Commandments". I had just flew a USGS Mission from Longview WA the day previous, and was not liking what the Goat Rocks looked like - obvious deformation.

Chuck Clancy
Well, I have many memories, I live in Tacoma, WA which is about a 2 hour drive from the mountain, once it became active again, I used to drive down every weekend to watch this geologic wonder, I would drag one of my brothers, or my grandparents with me. One time, my whole family went to cougar and watched. There were thousands of people there, there food carts set up, people selling t-shirts and other memorabilia, helicopter rides, you name it. I always watched the news, and read the paper about it, I was so into it. On the Day of the "Big One" my whole family was at my Mom's, and we were glued to the action on the TV, we went outside and could see the towering Plume, and we were well over 100 miles away. I have taken my own family to Johnston Ridge several times, and we were even there during the last dome building phase when they evacuated the visitors center when the earthquake activity really picked. Now, I'm waiting for renewed signs of life

David Warman
Brief. A year later I and a friend camped at the only site we could find open on the North side. Even there we were on top of a few inches of ash. Took over a year before the last traces of it left my camping gear.

Tbell1
I was at a Boy Scout camp somewhere east of Yakima. We heard 'thunder' that morning, and the scoutmasters started rounding people up to leave camp (I believe we were meant to leave that day anyway). As we were milling around the buses getting ready to leave, ash started coming down. I remember being fascinated and holding out my hand to let it catch the ash. The scoutmaster with us insisted that it was just 'snow'. I think that I questioned this, and he insisted that it was 'snow' and that we needed to get on the bus. I realize now that he was just losing his shit, and was panicking and trying to get his scouts on the bus. But at the time, I don't think I'd ever heard such a blatant contrary to obvious fact lie in my life, that wasn't some kind of joke. I was actually furious most of the way home and I quit the scouts the next week, (something that had probably been building anyway, as I also quit the church at about the same time). I absolutely cannot stand being lied to, for any reason, which makes science a decent fit for me, but makes reading the news an ordeal.

BirdeyeUSA
My folks were living in Bellevue, WA, Dad teaching at UW. My mother said that she was idly swimming in the lake and realized suddenly what she was seeing to the south...beat all records in getting back to the house. A friend was some long time later at work in the Palouse and was affected by the ash.

JSB
I was 15 and living in a suburb of Seattle in 1980. My father was a geologist so Mt St Helens was a frequent subject of conversation in our house. We speculated about when and if an eruption might occur and what it might look like. I remember being concerned about the bulge on the north side of St Helens. But we never thought the side of the mountain would slide off and it would explode sideways. Our worst case scenario looked more like Crater Lake/Mt Mazama with the blast going straight up.

I remember the logging companies and residents clamoring for access to the red zone prior to the eruption. They were certain the government was over-reacting to the danger. (That sure sounds familiar!) The day before the eruption some of the residents were allowed back in to collect their belongings.

On May 18 my family and I went canoing early in the morning and didn't hear about the eruption until we got home. Thereafter, we were glued to our TV for days watching the eruption, ash fall and flooding. Our house only got a very light dusting of ash a few weeks later.

I remember Harry Truman, who refused to leave his home on Spirit Lake and died in the eruption. And the very tacky "Harry Truman Slide for Life" fund raiser some seniors at my High School did shortly after the eruption.

I remember David Johnston, the vulcanologist who died while monitoring the eruption. "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" were his last words. He couldn't save himself, but he and the other USGS scientists probably saved thousands of others by insisting on closing the red zone around the mountain.

I remember apple farmers in Eastern Washington who were worried that the ash would destroy their crops. They had a bumper harvest that fall. Volcanic ash sure is fertile stuff!

In 1983 I visited Mt St Helens. The broken and twisted debris from a bridge on the Toutle River was even more impressive up close. The blast zone was awe inspiring. But I think the most impressive thing is how quickly life returned to the blast zone. On the north side of the Toutle River where I-5 crosses the river there is a man-made hill. It is made of Mt St Helens ash. Over the years the hill has gone from barren to green and lush. There are good sized trees growing on it now. If you didn't know what it was you wouldn't even look twice at that little hill. I look at it every time I drive past and marvel at the thin veneer of living green that hides the dead gray ash.

A few years ago I found "The 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington, Geological Survey Professional Paper 1250", in a used book store for dirt cheap. The geologic map tucked in the back is lovely. It even shows the directions the fallen trees point.

Wow, I guess I remember a lot about Mt St Helens. It was certainly an amazing sight.

Anne-Marie
I was eleven when the volcano erupted. In Britain, where I am from, there is a children's news program on the BBC called Newsround. They had the most fantastic footage of the bulge, the landslide and the eruption afterwards. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen. I remember that the ash even made it as far as England even though it was a fine dusting, when it rained you could see it on all the cars. A couple of years later, we studied volcanoes and earthquakes at school in geography. We went and watched the footage of the volcano again and were told to do a project on it. As you can imagine, I got an A for my assignment and have wanted to be a volcanologist ever since. In July 2009 with my family and nine year old daughter who is also a volcano fanatic, we spent our vacation in WA and the very first day we had to go to the volcano and the observatory. It was a 29 year dream
come true for me and a two year dream for my daughter. I hope they do something special to remember the 30th anniversary. I need to go back. I am not a volcanologist however, something I would still like to be.

Jacob Lowenstern
I was in high school in Virginia, and don't really remember a whole lot about the eruption other than that I watched the news with great interest.

Doug Mcl
I had just started working for Boeing in Kent a few months earlier. That day of the eruption I was hiking with my soon-to-be-wife on Granite Mountain near Snoqualmie Pass. We hadn't heard about the eruption, but noticed how dirty brown the sky became towards the east as the day progressed. My friend Steve was climbing on Mt. Adams and as the ash column rose up in the sky the air became so charged that their metal ice axes began to hum and spark. Days spent glued to the TV watching scenes of the lahar, mudflow, rescues. No widespread internet with live streaming then, you had to wait for the evening news shows. Weeks earlier, the debate on whether the reopen the area for recreation got people very excited, not unlike the recent "let us fly again" discussion in Europe. Then when the blast came and so many people were killed, some started accusing the state authorities of being lax by not forcibly evacuating people. Up in Seattle we were able to collect a bit of fine pumice from our porch after one of the subsequent eruptions, but never more than that. It launched a lifetime interest in eruptions for me. I still regret not having climbed St. Helens to its pre-eruption summit, but if Baker, Rainier or Glacier peak loose their tops I'll be able to say "I knew her when she was taller". Mt Adams seemed too long a drive back then and now my poor lungs limit my climbing to only flat low elevation mountains.

Glrnn Gouldey
My company transferred me from NJ to Beaverton, Oregon in early May of 1980 and I spent all my free hours as close to Mt St Helen's as possible as I wanted to photograph the eruption. There was continued coverage of the mountain bulging the days preceding the eruption so there was a good idea it would erupt soon and most probably from the area that was bulging. I was in a hotel off I5 just south of the
Washington boarder when the volcano erupted Sunday morning May 18. I rushed up I5 and photographed the eruption near Kalama, Wa. For a short period the ash was in a perfect mushroom cloud, which I photographed before the jet stream, started pushing it east toward Yakima. I went further up I5 in Washington State photographing wherever there was a good view. I spent the day traveling all around the west side of Mt St Helens. When I went to head back south I found myself trapped north of the Tuttle River. So much material had accumulated into Spirit Lake and down the rivers the I5 crossing was closed to traffic as the rivers had taken out the smaller bridges just east of I5. Mt St Helens shot another large ash cloud around June 20, which went more southwest and gave us a covering of ash in the Portland metro area. People were instructed to wear surgical masks until it settled days later. Another ash cloud occurred in July but neither were the power of the May 18 eruption. I spent most of the summer weekends of 1980 around and in the Red Zone photographing and collecting ash and other samples.

Toutle River near I-5, filled with debris from the 1980 eruptions. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Paul
I was living in Virginia, a freshman in college. My best friend from HS went to the University of Washington. All I wanted was a vial of ash. But no, he gave it to a hot chick he met in a bar outside Springfield, Illinois. I'm still pissed.

Darin Speed
I was camping near Ellensburg Washington on May 18th 1980. We were approximately 80 miles down wind.
We had spent the most of the night taking Astrophotos with our telescopes.I was awakened from a sound sleep at 8:32 by two very loud booms. I thought they were either sonic booms (common in the mountains near the Yakima Firing Range or thunder.
I ruled out thunder because of the perfectly blue skies.
I went back to sleep for a while. At about 10:30 I woke back up to the sound of something sliding down the side of the tent.
I opened the tent door and looked out into twilight and it was raining dirt! Actually sand.
I knew instantly that we were in trouble and had better get out of the mountains.
We packed up the telescopes (Still has ash in the case etc.) and jumped into my friends Pinto wagon.
In the half hour it took to pack up it got dark as night out.
Being the best "snow" driver I then drove the 20 miles back to town.
It was pitch black in town at 12:30 on a clear day.
The ash was very slippery like snow and was like driving at night in a snow storm.
We made it back to I90 to find it closed from Spokane to Cle Elum (something that has never happened).
The state patrolmen said that the highway was closed and we would have to stay at the truck stop.
Instead of being trapped at the truck stop there we waited until the patrolman was busy and snuck out of the truck stop and slowly drove up the old highway.
The going was very slow about 10 miles per hour.
I had to stop every time a car came in the opposite direction and wait for the ash to settle.
After about 2 hours we made it the 20 miles to the road block near Cle Elum.
The state patrolman said we were lucky we were the only car that had come out of the ash zone.
Only perseverance and knowledge of the local roads made this possible,
I also wasn't sure if my Calculus professor would believe me if I missed my Calculus test.
Once out of the ash zone we drove home at the speed limit in the haze of the ash.
My mom was not so lucky she was in Ritzville Wa (Gritsville) than was trapped for 4 days at grade school due to the foot of ash they received.
I still see ash on the ground near Ellensburg and think of that most interesting day.
Being an amateur Geologist I feel fortunate to have experienced this once in lifetime eruption.

Mike Matney
I was 14 at the time and I lived in the coastal mountains of Oregon, between Eugene and Florence. I had spent the night at a friend's house and we were out feeding the chickens when we heard a series of loud noises. It sounded like dynamite blasts, which weren't that uncommon in the area as logging roads, were being built all the time. The thing that made it unusual though was that it was a Sunday morning and no road building was going on at the time. My friend and I remarked, jokingly that it must have been Mt. St. Helens finally blowing its top. When we finished feeding the chickens we went inside and his mom told us the news that it had blown.

The Pumice Plain after the May 1980 eruption of St. Helens. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Jennifer in Portland
I was 14 at the time, living in Eugene, OR. I was visiting relatives in Seattle when the eruption occurred and I remember driving back down I-5 the day afterward (?). I remember that we were supposed to keep our windows sealed shut, but my grandmother was smoking in the car and I felt like I was suffocating.

At one point, there was a very light sprinkling of ash on our car in Eugene. Lots of people were collecting the ash - I remember the "ashenware" pottery you could buy. You can probably still get it in some tourist shops here.

I also remember visiting the area below the mountain very soon afterward with my parents - we drove up along a river (the Toutle River, maybe?) as far as we could go before reaching a roadblock. It was extremely eery, with uprooted trees clogging the river and everything blanketed in gray. Whenever I drive up I-5 now I see a big hill that used to be ash dredged out of the Toutle river - now it is covered with trees.

At the time of the eruption, my parents were riding their bikes from Eugene to San Francisco. They put "Volcano refugee" signs on their bikes and got a lot of laughs.

I also remember this fantastic red plastic Mt. St. Helens volcano hat that I got soon after the eruption. It had a rubber bulb that you filled with flour, and when you squeezed the bulb, the flour puffed out of the top of the hat like an eruption. I wonder what ever happened to it. Someone in Europe should make a similar hat for Eyjafjallajokull.

John
Regarding Mt. St. Helens, I have two memories: One, I was a senior in high school driving through rural Iowa to visit a distant girlfriend and somehow I got some conservative scare preacher on the radio. I remember his words "don't you think all of this activity [St Helens] is a sign that something big is happening..." He was declaring eminent apocalypse. I was quite freaked out. Of course little in the way of what the preacher was predicting ever happened.

And the second, I was visiting my brother's graduation from a military academy on the East coast. Another family came from Missoula Montana. I still can picture their senior aged daughter (I thought she was pretty hot -- I know this conflicts with memory 1, but I was 18 at the time). They reported they had been getting ash like snow where they lived. I thought seeing ash would be a great excuse to try to visit this girl.

Lockwood
I had arrived in Corvallis (after working for a few years after high school outside of Cleveland) just a few days after the first earthquake. As you might imagine, this cratonic young man was quite taken with Her Majesty's tantrum. I've actually been doing a series of postson this, combining my recollections and reactions to the volcano, along with stuff I've been able to find on the web, to augment my shaky memories of exactly what happened.

JLW
My kids were 8 and 12 at the time and I remember showing them the ash (dust) on the family car from the eruption - they were amazed that it had traveled all the way from Washington to our home in Ann Arbor, MI.

We went to the site, or at least as close as possible, the next summer. I bought a poster of Harry Truman who refused to leave his cabin on Spirit Lake - Harry is still my hero 30 years later!

M. Randolph Kruger
I was between assignments in the military and here in Memphis at home during the January following this. It was COLD and we had taken hits from snowstorm after snowstorm.

I was at a bar called Benigans and the word went out-clear the streets of your abandoned cars, or we will ! Reason given was that the danger of a firestorm was starting to grow as fires broke out from people trying to keep themselves warm would space heater this, throw kerosene into the fireplace that. Dumb but yeah it was happening cause it was zero.

There is a place in East Memphis called Germantown...Beverly Hills East if you will and there were hundreds of abandoned cars on the three main veins that went east. Porches, Mercedes, BMW's and naturally ordinary Chevy's and Fords. So they gave them 'til six to get them off the roads...They didn't cause they were buried in snow and ice. Yep a foot of packed snow into ice at that.

So along about 6 and after I had tankered myself off with about the 5th shot of vodka of the night I see one of those old police Plymouth Fury's that you saw on CHIPS back in the 70's. Full metal rack on the front, snow chains, and its rolling towards a bridge where the cars had collected cause those bridges and overpasses go first right?

There is a kid in there of about 25 and I can tell he is on a mission from God. That mission? Clear the streets of all vehicles not moving. So, with his state of emergency declaration under his belt and of course his seat belt fastened he took the first one like a 16 year old who had been plied with corn liquor and fast talk by a 20 year old.

WHAAAAAAAAM ! He got the first one and he hit it amidships like a torpedo and man I never knew a Volvo could take so much. Moderate damage and it slid up to the curb and then over it onto the sidewalk. Instantly there was an audience. Kid lines up on a Porche next and it it in the tail and it did about 4 spins and it too was up on the curb much worse the wear. I bet it was 20,000 for starts to fix that. Onward he pummelled into the night, taking no heed but for one thing and that was to clear the road. I moved out onto the sidewalk and stopped at the liquor store as he progressed because this was too much fun to watch. I had to follow him. So for about every 5th car, I took a shot of vodka and along about car 25 or 30 I was smashed. But I stayed with him. By now he was at the Holiday Inn and a lot of the people from the freeway and G'town had not gotten the word and they were the ones who had lots of cars out there. I saw one guy with a load of groceries turn purple as he realized what was about to happen to his car but ...errrrrnrnnngngggghhhhh toooooo late bubba. There goes a Chevy 2500 4 speed dual wheel truck. History....Radiator, front end, both front panels. Gone.... Within minutes this was on the news and of course the helicopters were up sending pictures.... It wasn't but another 30 minutes before the kid had received all the fun and recognition he waw going to get.

But it was sure fun to have a class warfare experiment from a volcanic eruption 1800 miles away.

Scott
So, you ask for personal accounts. I don't know what you have so far, but I was personally involved in the blast for weeks. The day of the eruption I had entered a 37 mile bike race in Cheney, Wa. About half way through the race I noticed what looked like the mother of all storms to the west. I anticipated getting hammered by rain or hail by the end of the race. I actually won that particular minor race, but, just as pulled in to the finishing area, the ash started to fall. It was only then that someone told me about the mountain. Victory was short lived since I had my wife, some friends and my 6 month old daughter in the car that now had to be driven 20+ miles into Spokane, Wa. where I lived. By the time we had traveled 10 miles, visibility was close to zero, I had to open my door to see the edge of the road, wipers were useless. Finally getting home I picked up my 2 yr. old son and waited for the news of what happened and what to do. Rumors of possible silicosis were bandied by the news for the first few days, everyone wore masks. We would encouraged to sweep the ash from in front of our homes since it would reduce the amount of airborne ash. The business where I worked was closed for the week, however we were enlisted in sweeping the ash off the roof. In the long run, other than a dead lawnmower that sucked in to much ash, there weren't any dire consequences, just some great stories. Many communities around us had it far worse, but the larger population of Spokane certainly received greater attention.

Mike
I was 10 at the time, living in suburban Portland, roughly 60 miles from the volcano. Since at least a year beforehand, I'd been interested enough in volcanoes to check out USGS publications on the Cascades from the local library, and I'd worn out my own copy of Harris's "Fire & Ice," so obviously I was excited when Mt. St. Helens began erupting in March, 1980. On the morning of Sunday, May 18 I was at a neighbor's house when his mother told me that Mt. St. Helens was blowing up big time ? We'd heard nothing. I rushed home, turned on the TV, and saw the massive mudflow churning down the Toutle River. It was overcast in Portland for much of the day, so for quite a while the only footage was of bridges getting wrecked, etc., and there was nothing to see from the city. But it cleared later, and my family went
up onto a hill late in the day to witness the ongoing eruption. The mountain I knew seemed half gone; ash boiled 10 miles into the sky. I think my parents had a hard time pushing me back into the car to go home.

George
I was on a boat near Reedsport, Oregon when the volcano went off. We actually heard the boom, thought it was the fuel dock exploding again. (Long story...) When we found out that it was Helens we were amazed at how far away we had heard it. There was this crazy guy who was a media hero for staying through the evacuation, he died of course (along with some scientists.)

A college friend of mine had been in Portland during the eruption. He had gone in to see an afternoon movie (Star Wars? memory is hazy) and when he came out it was pitch black.

My Uncle and his friends shared a lawnmower (Portland) to try to get the ash off of the grass. They knew it would trash the mower so they all pitched in for a replacement. Cleaning the gutters was apparently an absolute chore.

I have a beautiful glass bowl made from Helens glass.

In Eugene we got a light dusting of ash a few times, enough to mess up the cars. Getting it off without scratching the paint (my Dad is very particular about cars) was next to impossible. Although hosing was ineffective, a series of strong rainstorms seemed to help.

We had a TRS-80 computer that we were very concerned about (my Dad taught statistics at the University) so we always sealed it up really well when we left the house for awhile. We also had multiple air filters for the cars.

Blowdown of trees near Mount St. Helens after the May 1980 eruption. Image courtesy of the USGS/CVO.

Natural Cynic
I was a graduate student at Washington State in Pullman, directly in the line of the ash cloud as it moved eastwards. I lived east of town on the Moscow-Pullman highway and that morning I watched part of an NBA playoff game in the morning and news bulletins that the mountain had blown interrupted the broadcast. I had duties in our animal room to take care of that afternoon, so I thought that I should get them done as soon as possible. As I rode my bike west towards campus, it was a
bright sunny day, but it looked like a massive thunderstorm was moving eastwards dark, billowing clouds in the sky about 20 degrees above the horizon. I had the radio on and was listening to the reports and by the time I had finished most of my work and had a chance to look outside, it was after 2 PM and it was getting very dark. I walked to the student union to see what was going on and to see what was on TV. A whole lot of people were in a state near panic since no one knew about the toxicity of the ash. I returned to the lab and made sure that all windows were closed and I found a supply of standard filter masks and returned to the Student Union and handed them out to anyone who wanted one as they were exiting the building. As it turned out, no one needed them that badly.

The most vivid recollection that I had was being outside at 3 in the afternoon and almost the whole sky was pitch black. The only natural light was a thin band on the eastern horizon appearing to be grey-streaked orange-red.

Not being sure of my own safety I decided not to pedal home, so I just did a lot of studying and crashed in my office that night. In the morning the sun was shining through a low-lying haze and the ground was covered with about 2-3 inches of grayish beige dust. There was almost no traffic moving and any vehicle that moved was trailed with an ash plume. There were warnings to drive at 5 mph to keep the dust to a minimum. By noon, it was obvious that things were not going to be normal the rest of the semester. There had been a run on beer at the local markets. Many classes were cancelled for the week, but we grad students just carried on as if little had happened - we were preparing to go en masse to a scientific meting later that week. When we got back, it had been decided that anyone could go home early and would receive as a final grade the grade that they had before the ashfall.

Pullman is surrounded by wheat and dry pea fields and the ash apparently helped seal the moisture in the soil, leading to a bumper crop. The farmers were happy, except for the fact that that they had to go through many extra air filters on their combines.

eklemetti Mon, 05/17/2010 - 03:26

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The Burke Museum will mark the 30th anniversary of the biggest geological event in the Pacific Northwest of our lifetime â the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens â with an evening of talks, displays, food and drink. View displays of plants and animals collected from the blast zone for research, hear what scientists learned from the eruption itself, and learn about the stunning return of life to the blast zone.

Amazing post. Congratulations to all. And happy birthday (tomorrow) to Mount Saint Helens...

Great stuff. As a kid living on the East Coast, my memories are just of news reports on television. I remember seeing people shoveling the ash with snow shovels, and thinking: that certainly doesn't look like fun.

I'm currently reading "Volcanoes Crucibles of Change" by Fisher, Heiken, Hulen.

I also always thought JSB version:
"I remember David Johnston, the vulcanologist who died while monitoring the eruption. "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" were his last words. He couldn't save himself, but he and the other USGS scientists probably saved thousands of others by insisting on closing the red zone around the mountain."

However, this book tells how Johnston came to be on duty at the observation site that day. Until that time IT WAS A GRADUATE STUDENT/summer field assitant to Johnston on duty (Harry Glicken). He had an appointment made in Feb. to be in Calif. to discuss graduate school May 18th and his supervisor David Johnston, volunteered to take this place that fateful day. Apparently, this site was manned normally only by one person Glicken.

We think of the paid professional doing the primary work but how much of science is really done by students in the field of study?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Glicken

Unfortunately, Harry Glicken died at another volcano in 1991.

some great video of Mt St Helens here http://www.kgw.com/news/Mt-St-Helens

I've been thinking about those famous time-lapse photos of the collapse (was the photographer Gary Rosenquist?) and what an amazing set of circumatances made them possible:
-It happened in daylight (could easily have taken place after dark, volcanoes don't keep office hours)
=It happened on a Sunday (during the week the photographer wouldn't have been free to go volcano-watching)
-Clear blue skies and sunshine (low cloud and rain/fog/snow are more typical Cascades spring weather)
-The camera was aimed at the 'bulge' (had Mrs Rosenquist not bumped into the mounting, or had there been opportunity to correct the setting, it would have been focussed on the summit)
-And most important of all, the initial blast missed the campsite (a very small difference in the geometry of the collapse and the blast would have swept over the campsite with likely fatal results for the Rosenquists and the camera; as it was it passed within, I think, 2km of them)

Fortune favours the brave, as Pliny The Elder reputedly said (much good did it do him)

I've seen a lot of claims about the volcanic sand being great for agriculture. I guess if people are lucky to have a volcano that spits out the right minerals it's great - you have a sterile medium and all you need are the seeds and water. But you have to survive the sand being dumped on you - for people near the volcano they typically don't have a harvest until about 2 years after the eruption ceases. I went to Pinatubo about a year after the eruption and there were great gray deserts where the sand had accumulated; it was quite a contrast to the forest areas which were not destroyed.

@Erik: Can you delete the spam (and preferably block the spammer)?

on may 18 1980 i li.ved in yakima wa i was in 5th grade that morning i rember seeing a dark rain cloud my brother said that the mt st helens erupted.than my came in front room said yes it did erupt she went outside got the clothes of the clothesline we got all of our pets in the house my mom. we weent inside we shocked when we looked outside at noon it was pitch black outside we went outside to feel the ash it felt like sand. the next day the school was canceled for a week until the ash was cleaned up for a whole week the sky was gray my 2 older brothers and my dad were in the gaurd and was involed with the cleanup of yakima.

@JB: Yeah, volcano work is definitely hazardous. Even when in the field with vulcanologists I'm always going "why the hell do you want to go *there*, any sensible person would go the other way". At least I've never had the dubious pleasure of dodging volcanic bombs - an activity some friends have engaged in. On one trip I meant to fly around a volcano in a helicopter; unfortunately for me I was accompanied by one vulcanologist from the USGS and my pilot had many years' service with a volcano observatory - and they flew right into the vent. It's bad enough there's a pretty high risk of being killed by a pyroclastic flow while flying around, but people who want to fly into the vent are just plain nuts. I remember one email a few years ago cautioning against entering the S/SE to NW sector of a certain vent because the turbines may lose too much power and not be able to hold altitude; I felt like writing back "normal people simply avoid all sectors of an active vent".

Volcanologists ponder a spate of deaths in the line of duty

Article Abstract:

Twelve volcanologists have died in eruptions since 1991. Some scientists want safety guidelines to be used during field work. Others, including one who was badly injured in eruption, advise caution in applying too many restrictions in an overreaction to the problem.
author: Kerr, Richard A.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Publication Name: Science
Subject: Science and technology
ISSN: 0036-8075
Year: 1993

I thought about saying something here earlier but refrained from it because I was not directly concerned with St Helens. But it is true that I first heard of Mount St Helens in 1975, when I was 13 and already very very interested in volcanoes. Back then, a German news magazine had a little piece that cited the famous "Science" report by Crandell, Mullineaux and Rubin (Science vol. 187, pp. 438-441, link: dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.187.4175.438), which warned of a new eruption of the volcano "perhaps before the end of this [the 20th] century".

On 19 May 1980, German newspapers carried the news of the explosion of St Helens. Strangely enough, I was not very surprised, though learning all the details of this event later, I started being haunted by its magnitude and dynamics, and the feeling of awe has never quit since then.

I recently bought an excellent book that narrates the events surrounding the 1980 eruption of St Helens from a very different, and exceptionally human perspective. The human dimension has never been told fully in all other reports on the eruption, and there is still belief that most of the 57 people who died were in the "forbidden" zone, which as a matter of fact, most weren't. Among all that I've read about St Helens, this is the one book that has most thoroughly stirred my emotions. Everyone who's interested in this volcano and the events of 1980 and later, MUST ABSOLUTELY read this book.

Frank Parchman, "Echoes of Fury: The 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens and the Lives It Changed Forever", Epicenter Press 2005, 432 p

www.amazon.com/Echoes-Fury-Eruption-Changed-Forever/dp/0974501433/ref=s…

John H. McDonald:

I was an undergrad at the University of Washington in spring 1980....That was May 17. At 8:28 the next morning, the place we'd had our picnic, and the roadblock on the Spirit Lake highway, were buried under a rapidly moving wall of mud, ash, and logs.

Wow! I lived a block up from Lander and Terry Hall, so we had lots of friends in those dorms.

We heard all about the group from the dorm who took a trip and got waved through the road blocks the day before the eruption. It was legendary. I'm glad to see you post that memory.

It certainly beats my lame story. I found out about the volcano by a sign at the communications center at the University Street Fair. I went home and called my soon (within a week) husband at a friend's room in Lander Hall where they were gaming. I told them to turn on the TV, which they did... and images they saw made them forget about killing orcs.

I was a musician in Portland in 1980. I was supposed to play at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle I think on May 19, so I was planning to drive up on the 18th. I was staying at a friend's house, a decrepit little Victorian in SE Portland that he had radically remodeled, installing several skylights. One was directly above the bed in the loft where I was sleeping. I opened my eyes, saw the grey muck on the skylight, and knew right away what had happened. I-5 was closed, so I missed the Bumbershoot gig. That's probably why I never got rich & famous, and eventually changed careers. Now I'm a science writer! My dad, a geologist, made several sets of earrings for his daughters by melting the ash into beautiful black spheres.

Does anyone know if windows were broken in Seattle by the MSH eruption? A number of my Geology 101 students tell me they heard about this from their parents. I don't remember hearing anything about this previously.
Please reply to tuckerd@geol.wwu.edu

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Friday Flotsam: EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, Chilean volcanoes and the Syfy "super eruption"

eklemetti — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:07:09 +0000

Friday Flotsam: EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, Chilean volcanoes and the Syfy "super eruption"

Time to play a little catch up ...

EyjafjallajÃ¶kull erupting in early May. Image by and courtesy of Martin Rietze.

A brief update on our friend EyjafjallajÃ¶kull - the eruption plume from the volcano was considerably taller yesterday, reaching 6-9 km (20,000-30,000 feet), but prevailing winds meant the ash hazard was confined to areas in the middle of the North Atlantic and northern parts of the British Isles. However, even as the ash hazard for Europe wanes (for now), you shouldn't forget the amount of ash being dumped on parts of Iceland. If you want to see some stunning images of the eruption, Eruptions reader Martin Rietze sent me a link to his gallery of images and video from a recent summit climb of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. He got some up and close shots of the volcano erupting (see above and the check out the link). You can also check out the daily timelapse of activity at the volcano or another gallery of shots from the volcano.
UPDATE 11:30 AM EDT 5/14/2010: Nice article on Live Science about the ash plume interacting with a front passing through the North Atlantic.
Another Eruptions reader, Manuel, sent me some news about activity in Chile over the last week. ONEMI declared an warning around Villarrica after the SERNAGEOMIN determined that the lava lake at the summit was becoming increasingly active. Tourists are being warned to avoid the popular summit hiking trails. You can check out a bevy of webcams of Chilean volcanoes on the SERNAGEOMIN website.Argentina is also on alert for potential ash from a number of Patagonian eruptions that may be in its future.
One other volcano that is almost always in some state of unrest, Popocatepetl, also has a webcam you can watch. Over the last few years, the volcano has had an almost constant steam plume with minor ash - and remember, Mexico City sits in the shadow of this volcano.
And if you're been concerned that we haven't seen many volcano-related movies lately, your wait will be over soon ... sort of. Syfy announced they have started shooting a movie called "Super Eruption", where (you guessed it) Yellowstone erupts. It is, of course, being shot in Bulgaria and if it is run by the same types who decided "Syfy" was a good name of a TV network, we know its going to be great. (And as a sidenote, can't we have a different large caldera system erupt in a movie?)
And remember, the thirtieth anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens is next week, so send me your memories. You can find a lot of articles commemorating the eruption already.

eklemetti Fri, 05/14/2010 - 03:07

Tags

volcanoes in the media

volcanoes in the media

Good morning

Photos from my trip out there, mostly from Tuesday but the last three are from yesterday (Thursday). I had to work on Solheimajokull glacier on Tuesday afternoon, which at the time was right in the heavy tephra fall area. Not a huge amount of fun. I was as that glacier maybe a month ago and it was beautiful and white, but now it looks like the Moon out there!

There's an interesting shot of the tephra fall that I took near Thorvaldseyri, too (near the THEY GPS station). It's amazing how much stuff has fallen! There's a very visible thick, dark layer representing the first phreatomagmatic-Plinian phase, and then alternating bands of lighter-coloured tephra above it from more recent phases. Pretty interesting stuff. There were some hard layers part-way down from rainfall mixing with the tephra, but the stuff on the surface was loose.

Here's the Flickr album:

www.flickr.com/photos/10738332@N00/sets/72157623934563325/detail/

Click the photos for a bigger version.

I took some video footage which I'll try to upload soon, too. My internet connection is being funny though...

James: Interesting photos. One question: Do you think the glacier is now better insulated under several cm of Tephra or will it heat up, since the surface is now black.

While things are quiet on the blog - could someone tell me if "Plinian" comes from the Vesuvius eruption in 79AD watched by Pliny the Younger and in which the real scientist of the family, his Uncle, Pliny the Elder died. I have sort of presumed this but would be grateful if someone would confirm it.

#2, James.
Wow, very nice pictures. It can't be easy to work under those conditions. Looking forwards to the video.
Thanks!

@Chris:

A thin covering of ash will increase the surface albedo and increase melting, but once it hits a certain threshold, the tephra begins to insulate and will slow down melting. This explains the formation of dirt cones and ogives (possibly) on glaciers, amongst other things (well, dirt in general, not just volcanic products).

I didn't get onto the glacier surface itself, but certainly if there's as much ash and tephra on the ice surface as on the ground below, I'd imagine it'd be pretty nicely insulated.

--------------------

@mattlee:

That's how I understand it, yes.

Thank you James. For that and all your contributions.

@ Chris: Glaciers get covered with rocks all the time - mainly from debris flows onto the top of the glacier. The glacier do just fine with that debris on top, so the tephra likely doesn't have a huge effect on melting the glacier. Check out one debris-covered glacier in Antarctica here:

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagedisplay/img_display.php?…

@Anna, Reynir - old thread 'kolniÃ°ur' trans. - thanks

@8 ... Erik ... I have seen icebergs off Newfoundland with black lines running through them ... am I correct in assuming that this is ash?

@Matlee, #4: I think so, yes. It also one of the oldest detailed reports of an eruption which is still available today.
@James/Erik: Thanks for the explanation. I remember some cold war plan from the 60s which involved covering the arctis with small carbon particle to melt the ice and flood the harbours of the enemy by this way.

http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/IPPS/html/MSG/RGB/DUST/WESTERNEUROPE/index.h…

Ash cloud looks like it's right over northern UK, but no planes grounded (except BA strike) LOL!!!

@mattlee (#4) that is correct, Plinian indeed is derived from the two Plinys that played an important role during the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption; that eruption was indeed a type example for what we call today a "Plinian" eruption.
The current EyjafjallajÃ¶kull definitely is NOT a Plinian eruption, and at no time has been such; the initial phase of the summit eruption was "Surtseyan" (phreatomagmatic) and then it became Strombolian-Vulcanian.
From what can be seen from the HvolsvÃ¶llur webcam (eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-hvolsvelli/) today, the activity is quite strong, and there seems to have been little wind allowing the plume to rise higher than for a while.

#9: Anyway, I did a bit of poking into where the word 'kolniÃ°ur' might come from. The lyrics to 'KolniÃ°ur' look rather dark and dingy to me. My best guess is that it's derived from 'kolniÃ°' (coal-black 'niÃ°'). 'NiÃ°' is the waning phase of the moon, so 'kolniÃ°' would, to my guess anyway, be the end of the waning, when the moon reflects little or no light to the Earth.

Should it interest anyone, the current picture (14:00 UT) from the camera in Surtsey shows a dark western sky.

Heavy ashfall in Vestmannaeyjar.

@16 You can see it on the radar.
http://en.vedur.is/weather/observations/radar/

interesting blocky islands out there too, from Surtsey - other eroded little underwater eruptions?? can't believe I flew over S. when it was first emerging, Dk to Is...

More music inspired by EyjafjallajÃ¶kull:

http://www.myspace.com/elizanewman

I can't link directly to the song. You'll have to wait for the flash player to load, and start playing the song EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.(Some of you will probably remember the beginning of the song from Al Jazeera News where she was teaching people how to pronounce the name of the volcano.)

I've kind of fallen in love with this song. :D

At last, the Vestmannaeyjar webcam is useful to the volcano nuts. (Turn off the focusing aid if a box is showing.)

82.148.72.2:60000/control/userimage.html

For anyone new: click on my name below to see a map showing EyjafjÃ¶ll and neighboring webcams.

If you have an hour or two to kill, check out the Martin Rietze site mentioned in section one of the update.
The video clips have audio!

# 20, PeakTV: that is a supermap, thank you!
That has been a lot of work, to put all that information.

I blame all the volcanologists who don't spend anytime promoting Long Valley, now that would be exciting. I guess all the rough terrain around it, especially the White Mountains, makes calculating the destruction would be difficult, but that never stopped the History Channel before.

@23 Don't you mean the Armageddon or Future History channel? ;>)

Oh, @Erik's fellow scienceblogger has a gem here:

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/05/bohemian_mechanics.php

looks on Hvol cam as though it's getting a little more explosive again up there - 'burps' of plume rather than continuous..just viewing angle?

@25 Reynir That was absolutely hilarious, and I did read the more obscure jokes first, which helped. Next step is to get a group of scientists to do a video. Would go viral. ROFLMAO

Ash + children = playtime!

http://www.mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2010/05/14/skrifad_i_oskuna/

Video clip is Flash, IIRC.

Darker clouds/ash/smoke? passing by on the Thoro cam

@Boris, 13:

I thought they sort of created a new definition for the early phase of this eruption, and it was dubbed something like 'Phreatomagmatic-Plinian' because it had features of both. Not saying it was anything approaching a full-on Plinian eruption at any point, but I do vaguely remember that definition cropping up (in one of Erik's posts, I think).

Would be cool if Brian may and co. were to re-record the song with these lyrics.

Closer to topic: "We invited a group of 33 women from the farms under EyjafjÃ¶ll to Vestmannaeyjar to give them a bit of rest from the ash -- and this happens!" Comment on the ashfall today in VEY.

What is that on the ground in front of the volcano to the far left on the Thoro cam? Flir is showing at it as fairly hot. Thanks

Lot less fog around ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell. You can see the plume on its SSW drift.

@reynir 25 gem indeed...

A few threads back we were commenting on the white flashes that occasionally appear (not lightning). One of the Rietze videos shows this happening. I can't see a time stamp, but it's approx 1/4 into the video.

www.mrietze.com/images/Iceland10-2/MVI_6187.MP4

It seems that the loud explosive sound and pressure blast that hits the videographer shortly afterwards could be a result. Is this a magnesium flash?

@Corporal_E 32 . FLIR playing games again, I think - there's solar radiant heat to the dark ground, regardless of passing clouds (you can get sunburn w/o clear sky principle) - FLIR is always hungry for heat from any source. No vegetation to speak of yet to dull the heat reflection. My guess.

@36 Thanks...I have just not seen the regular Thoro cam with those colors at the same time as the FLIR showing such hot spots

OK arch fans - have we had tecnical collapse? on voda closeup, looks like there's a chunk that has fallen into the cleft...it's been there a little while, this is the first time I've looked at it up close...

@37 notice that the moraine hot spots are the ones with no or least green..screen catch the cams sometime and compare.

@39 Gotcha. Still wish I had a FLIR :)

@38
I think that this chunk appeared on the 12th. It was not there on the 11th. The 12th was a very foggy day, but you can see it on vodafone cam around 12:00. I'm not sure, but I think it was not in the cleft before the fog, around 4:00 (look at 4:30, just before the fog hides everything).

@ Carla 35: I've watched that video closely and the fleeting white cloud seems to me to coincide with an exceptionally vigorous blast; I think the ejecta went momentarily supersonic, which would explain the cloud, the shockwave, and the bang!

This video shows the same phenomenon beautifully:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aPygh_C_ro

@2 James, great shots... and i'm glad to see the masks. i actually have a couple of those masks around.(hanging from the hooks by the door, in the car, in my purse.) Best to be prepared. And You need more than one for sharing. i've learned the masks sell out pretty quick in the local stores. Did Your eyes sting? i noticed no eye wear. Thanks for sharing.
Best!motsfo

Boris @13 & Chris @11 Thanks. Having read about the Plinys' descriptions of the 79AD eruption, I can see why you all keep telling us that this is nothing like it - at the moment:)

Thanks to Erik for the link to Martin Rietze's gallery of photographs and especially the video. The footage is incredibly high quality i could watch it over and over. I would love to have been there as long as i had my cloak of invincibility with me :) It's amazing to think that EyjafjallajÃ¶kull has been erupting like that and more powerfully for around a month.

@ Carla the white cloud you see is the change in atmospheric pressure from the shockwave of the supersonic material being ejected, quite a bang !

FLIR TimeLapse 2010-05-13

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9ZPEKRZ6Bs

Thanks Tintin for the FLIR timelapse!

If you haven't seen it, there's a sterling photo of the glacier from the air on yesterday's IMO page (added later in the day) that puts the Thoro/voda cams into perspective.
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

@fireman, @zander: thanks for the supersonic explanation for the white flashes we have been seeing. So glad there is sound in that Rietze video. It's astonishing to see and (a few heartbeats later) to hear. This is how I imagined Eyja sounds and looks up close, all these long hours of staring at the Mila cams.

Also, @fireman, that youtube video is amazing!

Crevace along the glacier formed by the lava rather distinct now with the clear conditions. The snow on either side really makes it stand out.

Wonder if the coming week will be the week for the lava to make its appearance. Looks like it's at the drop off point.

Nice chunk of ice stuck in the big crack. Looks like a big hole just above it.

@carla #35 (and cc @fireman #42, @zander #45) Thanks for posting that video of the white flashes.

I have downloaded it and taken screen shots of the frames that include the white flash. You can see them all here:

http://skitch.com/suwc/

Seeing it frame by frame, it looks very much like fog, so I presume that the shockwave mentioned by Zander causes instant condensation of moisture, which then immediately evaporates again?

New status report:

http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Eyjafjallajokull_status_2010-05-14_IES_IMO…

Small quake at Mt. Hood, OR.

2.6 2010/05/14 19:03:04 45.362 -121.753 5.6 MOUNT HOOD AREA, OREGON

@ 54 Brian.

It was interesting going through the chronology of MSH today and seeing the same, "she's about to blow, no she's not", tooing and froing leading up to the eruption that we experienced here (and at Redoubt last year). What surprised me was that seismic activity at MSH appeared to be way more pronounced than here at MSH with a large number of >M4 quakes right under the volcano and still there was a lot of disbelief among many of the local population that anything dramatic might happen.

Neat site here. You can zoom way in on earthquakes in the Cascades.

http://www.pnsn.org/req2/

2 small quakes on Tues at Mt. Hood, and 4 today. Hmmm!

Hi Brian!

Long time lurker here from Oregon City.

Thank you for bringing the action at Mt Hood to my attention.

Very interesting.

@Suw: interesting to see the still frames showing the supersonic flash. I found a bit more about this "Prandt Glauert singularity" here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prandtl%E2%80%93Glauert_singularity

Also, Scarlet P. and Erik K. should get the thanks for posting links to Martin Rietze's amazing videos.

@ Brian D, the CVO don't seem to concerned by these earthquakes. http://volcano.wr.usgs.gov/cvo/current_updates.php

#2: Neat images, indeed. My sister said she got several good shots from Route 1 two days ago, but I'll have to wait until her out-of-country trip is over.

I texted her about the air closures today, and she just stuck out her tongue at me! Ick.

Looking at the webcams right now, either there are really strong low level winds pushing the plume to the west, or she's erupting from a different part of the vent. If you look at the Thorolfsfell webcam you wouldn't even think there was an eruption, but if you look at Hvolsvell, the plume is huge.

#42: Really cool video. Only one tiny teeny-weeny little problem: It distracted me into watching Gloster Javelin videos. The horror, the horror...! :-)

Here is a good web site where you can follow seismic activity (or lack thereof) at all the cascade volcanoes.

http://www.pnsn.org/WEBICORDER/VOLC/welcome.html Each seismograph opens up in a new window (or tab, if you choose that option).

As far as Mt. Hood, the statement that Zander refers to is this: "Recent Observations: A minor swarm of about two dozen earthquakes that began around March 21 has continued this week. The largest earthquake, a magnitude 2.4, occurred at 10:09 PDT this morning. These events are not thought to be of volcanic origin. Mount Hood produces small swarms of this size once every few years."

I seem to remember that there was another EQ swarm at Mt. Hood shortly after the 1980 eruption of St. Helens, which of course did not lead to any activity.

@motsfo:

I only jumped out for that shot very quickly, so I just kept my mask on and didn't bother with eyewear. Yeah, my eyes stung a little. You get tephra in them whatever you do (much the same with ANY little exposed crevice on your body).

When working on the glacier I was wearing goggles the whole time (and something more substantial than a hooded sweatshirt, too!). You really have to.

Holy cr@p... the plume on Hvolsvelli is beyond impressive...

This... is plinian activity, my friends... straight up to the upper troposphere.

Here is link to Pliny the younger's description of Vesuvius.

http://www.volcanolive.com/pliny.html

Guesstimation of plume height based on the mountains.. at least 15 km (45 000 ft). That may be it..

We may be seeing the magma which caused the earthquake swarms of the last days reaching the surface. This is deep, gas rich, fresh magma.... ideal candidate for some explosive action...

"The cloud was rising from a mountain-at such a distance we couldn't tell which, but afterwards learned that it was Vesuvius. I can best describe its shape by likening it to a pine tree"

Kudos for Pliny the Younger....... perfect description...

@ volcanophile,

certainly looks pretty impressive but I'd throw my money on this still being sub-plinian. It's not standing up to the breeze. By that I mean there is no sustained vertical eruption column to a high altitude (the trunk of Pliny's tree if you want to put it that way).
I think it only looks higher and more voluminous to us because it is not getting whisked away by the typically strong winds. That said, there is still a good volume of ash getting generated here. I wonder how long this will go on?

@Volcanophile (#68) - 15 km seems rather too high an estimate for me, that would be considerably more than during the most violent phase of the eruption on 14 April ... the Icelandic news would report that (but they don't). Consider that the volcano itself is a mere 1660 m tall, and we don't even see the whole height of it in the HvolsvÃ¶llur image. The top of the image field is maximum at 5-6 km elevation. The report by IMO states a height of about 7 km throughout today, which seems more plausible. It is easy to overestimate the dimensions of volcanic ejections especially once they are out of the field of visibility (which precludes any possibility of estimating the height because we don't see the top of the eruption column); I've done that myself during my early days on Etna, much to my own embarrassment.

Yep.. no perspective, no reliable guesstimation ;)

@Bruce.. at Heklubygdd (sp) the wind is 8,0 m/s... that is about 30 kmph... and still, that thing is shooting ash straight up against it... really violent...

A good, strong, massive subplinian ...

Latest newsreel on RUV has quite impressive footage of today's ash plume and its impact:

dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4497992/2010/05/14/2/

Certainly the activity is strong today - from the look of it the ash is quite black (thus, rather basaltic or basaltic andesite, not highly evolved), but as Bruce noted there is not a sustained Plinian column, it continues to be a relatively weak eruption plume, which is bent by the wind.

@Boris.. thanks for the link....

really strange.. This volcano does very unusual things....

How is it possible that:

1:) with a very silicic andesite (61,5% SiO2 that's quite something) we still get lava flows and lava spattering Strombolian-style.

2:) now the magma composition may have turned back to basaltic, and it's even more explosive...

This volcano is doing exactly the contrary of what we could expect it to do.....

@ Volcanophile,
I agree, good, strong massive subplinian!!
This is not to dispute the power of the blasts.. the footage from Martin Rietze is absolutely fantastic evidence of that, particularly the one with the sonic shock wave in it.

From Martin's videos it looks like the cone surrounding the vent is now almost as high as the ice cap which was put at around 200m. Is this a good guesstimate?

Based on the footage of M.Rietze, it's really impressive to say the least, all of this for a mere (guesstimated ;) VEI 3+...

I can't even think of what something like Tambora or Krakatoa (VEI 6+) might have looked like at close quarters... (anyway, that would have been the last thing I would have ever seen before being incinerated by pyroclastic flows...)

Speaking of pyroclastic flows.... is Eyjaf capable of doing this... On a glacier, this could be devastating (does anyone think of Nevado da Ruiz in Colombia, which did just that.... pyroclastic flows over a glacier... obliterated Armero, 24000 deaths...)

Cn anyone tell me how normal the ongoing earthquake activity across Iceland is? The amount of quakes near Grimsey and to the south near Reykjavik is this 'normal' background activity?

Perhaps some of the Icelandic contributors could help. Thanks

What I see now is not as strong as it was around 8:30 EST in the US. (not sure GMT) Then the plume for about 20 min went straight up off the screen. This however is thicker and darker.

Still quite a POP.

@78 that would be 8:30 AM May 14

@27 temp i think if it is significantly hotter than a "normal" andesite eruption it would be rather fluid until it cooled to the 900 C closer to the normal for that type of lava
i could be all wet, and wait for a better educated person to chime in

Boris, could you or Erik maybe do a short explanation for all of us explaining the interaction of 1) magma type and 2) gas in solution to explain the remarkable range of eruptive styles we have seen here?

I for one am still a little confused about it and for this reason: the primitive magmas at Fimmvorduhals were low in gas. They were also hot, runny basalts leading to a good Hawaiian style eruption. Nothing strange there.
The crater eruption on the other hand is andesite which means basically the magmas are stickier and generally cooler. Now this does not automatically translate into explosivity: witness Chaiten which is still chugging along after two years squeezing out a rhyolitic dome. In other words, the explosivity comes primarily from the volatiles in the magma, which I believe are primarily H2O and CO2, and not the Si concentration of the magma, which merely encourages greater explosiveness IF gas is present (stickier bubbles burst with greater force). So far so good.
Now, why do the more evolved magmas here at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull contain more gas than the primitive magmas erupted at Fimmvorduhals if these Si-rich magmas have actually evolved from the primitive basalts anyway? Is this a side product of crystal fractionation or they in some saturated from ground water after spending so many years in quiescience at a shallow level?
Or is the gas concentration actually comparable to Fimmvorduhals and the explosiveness we are seeing is due solely to the higher concentration of silica?

@Bruce.. Indeed.

When Etna had its big series of paroxysms in 2000, it erupted runny, but extraordinarily gas rich basalt. Thus the eruptions were very violent, jetting lava and ash several kilometres high, what you and I would call a "solid massive subplinian eruption".... not what you could expect of a typical basaltic eruption.

On the other hand, Chaiten, which is erupting rhyolite (something super-extra-sticky, way more so than andesite or dacite) is doing this rather peacefully, whithout even any pyroclmastic flow from dome collapses... again not what you could expect...

I've learnt that Etna once had a "basaltic plinian" eruption, that is, the gas contents were so massive, it didn't matter if the lava was sticky or runny, it just blew up.

On the other hand,

hat would also explain what Vesuvius did in 79... this volcano isn't known for emitting viscous lava, there has never been any dome growth episode there at least in historical times (the first time dome growth was described was at Montagne PelÃ©e in 1902, if such a thing had happened at Vesuvius before it would have been known long before...)

That's like opening a bottle of shaken diet-coke... you get half of it spraying everywhere...whatever the viscosity of the contents may be..

@#76 Just look to footage of Pinatubo if you want to see upclose plinian (well, ultra-plinian) action. I stumbled across this video the other day when looking for pictures of it on youtube. I believe it is called "Escape from a Killer Volcano" and shows the evacuation of Clark AFB in the Philippines. Those scientists really nailed that call. Saved many lives. There isn't as much footage of the plume as I would like, but I can't really blame them for not sticking around. It is terrifying and awe-inspiring to watch just on video all these years later. Even scientists who have waited all of their professional careers to see something like this eventually want nothing more than to get away from this beast.

It is about half-hour in length and is split into 3 parts. The first part seems to have started late into the show, so don't be alarmed, I couldn't manage to find the very beginning.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMe0VPQftsc

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvpBbiCG-7s

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74QkHh45bjw

I'm sure some of you have seen it before but it puts the current eruption into perspective for some of the newer cam-junkies like myself :)

Oh and thanks to our host and all the people providing analysis in these threads! I've found a new blog to enjoy.

Greg

Preceived ash height and color have a LOT to do with which
way the wind is blowing(even a small variation toward You will make the height seem much taller) and even high clouds will darken ash considerably. Moisture will make it look black. i remember getting the shock of my life after one of Redoubt's eruptions. We went from winter white to coalmine black in a matter of minutes.
And Good for You, @65 James! i'm glad to hear about the protective eyeware. (now i don't have to call Your Mom ;) )
Best!motsfo

@KarlUK 77 Not exceptional I'd say (been using IMO's EQ map as home page for ten years.)
But you can form your own opinion from these pages:

Monthly map since 1995:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/viku/2009/

List of every EQ since 1990:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/viku/svenni_listi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ydnLkVvfZM&feature=player_embedded#!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!!!

The FLIR cam looks like quite a show.

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

@Scarlet Pumpernickel Awesome video. All the sensations of being there without losing an eye :)

Mount Hood is stirring in its sleep:
http://www.pnsn.org/HOOD/hoodrec_eqs.html
and
http://www.pnsn.org/HOOD/hoodfigs.html

#86: Definitely a video to drool over.

#86 Amazing video! I wonder how these people have the guts to come so close. We can only be too grateful and enjoy the show.
#68 #84 I agree that the plume is higher, but looks more impressive because of change in wind direction. Just compare its current apparent height on MÃºlakot cam and the way it bends differently from what it showed in the previous days (towards the watcher).

@86 - Well....there WAS a time when á¿ thought my screen captures were pretty exciting..... ;)
Having a longer runnning time is great. Sound ditto. Reminds me of waiting for the next big wave in Hurricane season....thanks.

Wow, who lit the dynamite on "E". With an average plume height of 27,000 feet, plus a beautiful steam and ash plume. My heart goes out to the people in Iceland, who have to deal with the heavy ash falls.

@ 86, Wow, speechless.

Interesting little sequence of EQs.

@Boris 73 - : ( wonder if there is another link to this - even with VLC my mac won't play it...I get a sub-window before I have time to click on the 'play' arrow....

Interesting conversation re: type of eruption...

Good evning. I see I checked the volcano status at the right moment. Hekla seismometer shows a interesting signal http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/tremoren.htm

@ Brian #95: Meanwhile 8 EQs.

8 EQ's in an hour and a half. I think I'd avoid that side of the valley.

9 EQ. one deep

Make that 10 EQs

10 EQs, most shallow.

WTF. Why are the EQ:S making a line perpendicular to Eyja?

What is that light bottom left on the Thoro cam?

FLIR cam is high in activity too

Is it harmonic tremor or wind noise in the hekla seismograph? The tremor plots are showing no change. http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html#googtrans/auto/en

This is a odd sequance of earthquakes. They might be related to tension changes in the area. But they are in the TindafjallajÃ¶kull volcano system, that is north of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. Given the current location. But what is intresting is the fact they are all located in a small place. This might be a dike on the move there, I at least won't rule that out.

I don't see a lot on my geophone due to wind noise (8m/s and above).

The eruption appears to have gained strenght following this swarm of earthquakes. That is also intresting.

2 more EQs at depth

Another 2 EQ 22,0 and 22,01 deep

WOW! Look at FLIR! http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

And lava again just now http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

@86 one word, Amazing!!

Not one, two deep, 10 total. Reloading magma. Interesting axis pattern.

Speaking of tremor graphs, we need Peter and Mr Moho to take a look at the embedded periodicity of the vertical tremor plots. The pattern is rather regular.

The EQ's are very interesting. They follow the rifting pattern of the mid Atlantic ridge. If I were a Volcanologist I would say letâs see what happensâ¦. But I am not and as such have no professional reputation in the field to worry about â¦ soooo I say we are witnessing the first stages of a massive fissure event of global climate changing proportions(Like Laki) and we all better start buying canned food while it is cheap.... Or maybe not .

In all seriousness it does seem to show some possible new magma movement and we may get quite a show in a day or 2. If the quakes get stronger (4-6âs)then re-read above hysterical rant.The northern grouping of quakes I find interesting.

Another deep EQ and lightning is back!

@Jame #6.

Tephra is a crappy insulator. Bogus logic. Black body absorption /albedo change is one of core thermal processes underlying polar temperature rise.

14 EQs and I have to go to bed! Grrr.

15 now

Trying a video capture software, CaptureWizPro, and it seems to be pretty good (easy). One minute came out to about 1 meg. You can see it here, FLIR from few minutes ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8388935@N04/4607921816/

Is the northern group of quakes near the hypothesized crypto-dome?

Looks like the quakes have been adjusted, depths and locations have changed now.

OMG! who the hell is that crazy mother lover in the orange jacket????
I sure hope that hard hat hes wearing aint made of plastic!

21 EQ's now. The last batch is not deep. http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Fantastic lightening on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli!!!!!

@Renato YES!! quite some activity!

As they say in Seattle, "the mountain is out". The Olympics to the west are crisply outlined under snowy hats and a bulging Mt Rainier dominates the southeastern horizon. In towns along Rainier's western slopes, a lahar warning system was tested a second time this week after the first test failed due to a corrupt audio file.

Although we live in an active volcano region, most people I know seldom think about it. This is even true for people who were here for the Mount St Helens eruption, a distant childhood memory for my younger friends. (I lived in oblivion on the east coast.) In the summertime when Rainier is visible for days and weeks in a row, I can even forget what she represents. But after these days of watching Ejya, Rainier looks ripe and ominous, and I watch with renewed awe and respect.

@126 Carla You're right, it's spectacular when the ' mts. are out.' Rainier from down by Olympia is even more impressive.

Oi, Roberto, where are you keeping the lighting? I have been watching off and on and have missed it, I guess -

Tudo bem, over & out for the night.

I feel bad to say it, but, as long as this eruption doesn't pose any further harm to Icelandic people, I don't regret some more earthquakes to keep it going. I don't think my poor English knowledge could express my feelings any better then what's been already said about Eyjaf, the humbleness and awe it inspires with her beauty! Lava + ash plume + bombs +lightening . If it isn't Thor or Zeus himself,then, what else?

@Erik: "And as a sidenote, can't we have a different large caldera system erupt in a movie?)"

The film is actually about the Bay of Naples caldera going up, but the americans turned up and grabbed all the credit :-D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_(film)

@127 @byrdseyeUSA: Tudo lindo! I was just staring at the plume on ThÃ³rosfÃ¶llur cam, and saw this huge, but huge, lighting all over the bubbles on the plume. Couldn't believe my eyes, until it happened again and again, and I could also pick one on HvolsvÃ¶llur as well, but fainter. Breathtaking!

@birdseyeUSA - yes, Rainier looks HUGE from the viewpoints near Olympia. Can you see it from your computer? If so, I'm jealous! I have to go outside to see it. The view behind me as I sit here is to the west-northwest.

@Passerby, 116:

Then how else do you explain the formation of dirt cones on glaciers, for example?

They're prevalent on Icelandic glaciers. The process involves tephra falling on glaciers. Where there is a depression in the ice surface, the tephra builds up a little thicker. The thin cover on the ice surface increases surface albedo and promotes melting, and the tephra disappears, but where it is thicker it has an insulating effect. Thus the ice does not melt in these areas, leaving cones which are still covered in thicker tephra cover. You basically get inverse topography on a small scale.

The reason I was out that way this past week was to help with a study of Icelandic glaciers so this stuff is pretty fresh in my mind.

Plume is wide, dark, and vertical... Could anyone post a link to the radar where I can see the height?

I am so excited, I just saw lighting on the Poro cam! Wow! This is an omen, as I have quit my PHN job and am returning to the Airplane (flight nursing) full time! I can watch Volanocam all day now!

Now intense ashfall on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli, to the right of the plume.And new earthquakes to the north of Ejyaf glacier?

Black ash rain in HvolsvÃ¶llur. Just found this video on youtube. I can't imagine having black rain! This must be horrible for the locals dealing with this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYfOiqILhgs

I just saw some lightening on the Poro cam. Wow! This is a good omen for my life change: no more PHN, flight nursing full time. I can now view Volcanocam full-time. I think that the endless fascination with this eruption, is, we can view it in real time, check in for lava, watch for a while and then go on about your day...Thank-you Dr. Klemetti, and the rest of the eruptions crew, you have brought Earth Science into our everyday life.

Hello!
Check also the latest Llaima reports. They suggest something is cooking inside there. And there is new info about quake swarms beneath ChaitÃ©n in 2005 (and surrounding volcanoes)
Erik, what happened to the MVP? Lot of time without one.

No updates on tremors?

They seem to be repositioning quakes under Eyjfa
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

What happened to RÃV's cams (Katla and Hekla)?

StarBP @ 131: Here's the radar link. Note that the plume has to have a certain density before it is picked up by the radar, so the top might be higher than the radar indicates. brunnur.vedur.is/radar/rb5/eht.html

Renato @ 141: The RÃV cams have been out for a while.

For speakers of American, ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli transliterates to Thorolfsfell in English.

The tephra doesn't melt; if it 'disappears' from sight, it is either windblown (aeolian redeposition) or covered in fresh snow in place. As in the case of fine sands or loess soil particles, cones that form are caused by an underlying change in surface topology that serves to catch and retain additional seasonal frozen precipitation or are scour anomalies.

The effect we are speaking of (fine ash induced albedo shift, heating) is a large scale surface effect.

Several natural and anthropogenic sources contribute to 'dirty' high altitude glaciers: volcanic ash, dust storms, biomass burning and black carbon from coal/oil combustion.

In warmer winters in Iceland, the rate of snow deposition is so low that the glaciers are quite gray when checked by volunteers on annual glacier recession outings (as noted in on-line discussion reports of these groups).

The historic deposition rate can be substantial, as is the case when coal was the predominate combustion fuel source in the pre-petroleum oil era (before the 1930s-40s), pre-air pollution control (1970s) in North America and Europe or Asia (late 1990s) or during peak biomass burning events (Indonesia/SE Asia 1998), as measured and reported in polar and high glacier ice core studies.

@Peak VT: Thank you. I've been watching the eruption from Hekla's cam. My eyes are eager to see more and more... Do you believe, since the quakes are trending to the north, that a new fissure could be opening towards TindfjallajÃ¶kull?

Curiosities on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell

ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell is a tuya, and is the location of the MÃla ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell webcam. (The cameras look south and are located ~9.5km/5.9mi from the caldera center at ~530m. The lower camera is a thermal imaging device. Right-click to adjust stretching in the upper camera. The name is spelled "Thorolfsfell" in the English alphabet.)
source : "http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=101672425956645…"

"A tuya is a type of distinctive, flat-topped, steep-sided volcano formed when lava erupts through a thick glacier or ice sheet. They are somewhat rare worldwide, being confined to regions which were formerly covered by continental ice sheets and also had active volcanism during the same time period." (Wikipedia)

#145 The source above was provided by @ PeakTV, thank you for the useful information!

@Passerby #143 http://i40.tinypic.com/2yzhq41.jpg

I think the white stuff shown in the link from the HvolsvÃ¶llur webcam is snow caused by the large amount of condensing water vapor.

If snow readily accumulates as quickly as the webcam pictures indicate then the size of glaciers is strongly contingent on the amount of precipitation received and the growth that it creates.

Another EQ about 17km deep

Sorry: Peak VT

Renato @ 144: Since the earthquakes are so neatly aligned, it would seem something related to either a fault or a dike/fissure is happening. But the existing surface fissures on EyjafjÃ¶ll that I've seen mapped run roughly east-west. And according to pdf below, the NNW-SSE pattern of earthquakes has been going on for a while without producing a surface feature. My guess is that a new fissure will open... hundreds of years after we're dead. :| But your guess is as good as mine.

hraun.vedur.is/ja/skyrslur/Jokull51skj2000.pdf

The way the column goes down on HvolsvÃ¶llur cam does not look good.

@147 Late seasonal snow, will probably melt off soon (this summer). The glacier mass balance is far in the red, when present mass is compared against 1992 study results, with recession (outlet glaciers) and thinning due to high latitude polar warming (longterm trend) and less-than-typical winter deposition (shorter term trend). The outlet glacier recession at Eyjaf is the highest for any Icelandic glacier, despite it's altitude, as it's a southern coastal icemass.

PeakTV is kinda funny. Will there be a peak, or is the supply of TV programming inexhaustible...

#150 @Peak VT: I don't think I'm waiting for this to happen. We'll be getting enough of this beauty for a while, so I hope, but afterwards I may retire before that fissure shows up. But there was a discussion on that matter earlier on this thread. Seriously. Rupture of North Atlantic Ridge, a new Laki event, global cooling, you know, those things that can be quite scary. This volcano has already given enough surprises and I'm plenty satisfied. I watched through the whole Fimmvorduhals event, and now this phase. It's wonderful and I am honored to witness the whole thing. Well, I think is time to bed. Thanks again.

More earthquakes to the north!

I don't think that is snow....Looks like the wind is blowing the ash back more toward Hvolsvelli.

#86 amazing video!

Thanks @all for posting timelapsvideo's, screenshots etc. It helps cathing up after a nights sleep.
( the next vulcano to go of should be in Asia or so, then I can watch in daytime *s*)

Good morning everybody...

On Hvol webcam.. even if the wind is more than 8 m/s, the plume is still going straight up off the frame.....

Jon's helicorder is saturated with massive tremor and we have had a large seismic swarm under Eyjaf...

What could possibly go wrong???

Did the color of the ash get a darker in the last hour, or am I being fooled by a trick of the light?

Anyone know what the light showing on the Vodafone cam is all about? It started as a very small spot at about 7:30. Now it's much bigger.

#160 Bev, I have the feeling it's a flare of the lense of the webcam. NOthing to do with the eruption.

#161 Lavendel, Thank you. It does look more like a flare of the lense. Very eliptical.

Ahhh. Correction. Very 'elliptical'. I'm up way too late tonight. I just can't stop watching.

right, thats why it has nothing to do with the eruption is matter of light source position -> angle witdh lense etc,

just go the day back -> at 7th 7h 50m(or 49min, argl didnt remember) you can see it "forming" on other days it was the same.
Reflection of sunlight on a postion where the light of the lence is focused ? something like that ? ah dunno really for sure how this phaenomen works in his whole beatuy, but it is this effect.

#164 Dennis, Yep, there it is at 7th 7h 50m. Thanks for the confirmation.

@Volcanophile, What you are seeing is the wind. Currently it is ~12m/s so it is quite strong. As a result, you see that clearly on my geophone.

Ash blowing across HvolsvÃ¶llur camera I think

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. First, the EQs. They are all neatly aligned on the Eyjafjalla volcano's main conduit. Those who have been here since Feb will remember the location ~5.5km WSW BÃ¡sar. What is new is the depth at which a swarm occurred in this location.

The eruption plume is indeed impressive, as impressive as it has ever been since April 17th. However, looking at it carefully for some time, it is possible to discern that a) it is not strong enough to withstand the moderate winds (cf movement of normal clouds in the vicinity) above the summit, and b) it peaks not far above the field of view. Taken together this suggests a (very) strong Vulcanian plume of 6-7Â½ km height above the summit (7Â½ - 9 km above sea level). Scratch Plinian or Subplinian.

What is amazing is that we're a month into the main eruption and, judging by visual appearance, it is today as strong as at the start. When will she run out of decades-to-centuries old "rhyolite mush" for the basaltic intrusion to reactivate as andesite?

Keep an eye on those deep EQs! Wonder where they are heading... ;)

I wonder if Popo will attract any tourists if it goes "bang!"

As for giant calderas erupting, I'll vote for the one that forms that chain of atolls around the Northern Marianas Islands. Underwatersupervolcano - yummy.

Time-Lapse from May 13th: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_dMg7k9TU0

the video from the 14th is also available, the one from the 12th is in the process of uploading

10.55 GMT Thorolfsfelli cam. Looks as if there may have been a collapse relatively high up on the left side of the glacier. Please check and tell me what you see.

Thanks Philipp for the time-lapse video.

Good afternoon all! Another nice vimeo video http://vimeo.com/10548285

@130 Good morning Renato, brydsrye here - sorry! it was definitely time for sleep! ; )

Dagmar 173, thank you, nice video and good outfit to know about.

So I have a question for you all. The main page of the wiki I'm keeping is getting a bit long:

http://eyjafjallajokull.pbworks.com/

What would be most useful to you? Keeping the main webcam and primary source links on the front page and putting the day-by-day links on another page, or the other way round?

There seems to be a strong ashfall west of the volcano, see Hvolsvelli and Mulakot cams.

New ash warning in UK on BBC:
Parts of the UK's airspace are at risk of closure from Sunday because of volcanic activity in Iceland, the Department for Transport has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8684540.stm

Here's the current ashfall forecast: en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1885

As a non-pro, what about listing the last, say 2 days of video etc. links from the threads first, then the rest in current order? Also, if the earliest daily links were archived under a separate referenced heading, would that help you?

@suw175, sorry, for 179....

#174 @birdseyeUSA: Bom dia! I think Lady E will forgive us for a couple of hours away... :) I fell asleep too, against my will, but I'm back, and she's there. No changes. Same fury. Restless, she put us all, lurkers, to shame! BTW Any picasa pics from earlier lightning?

UK Telegraph website is carrying a photo gallery of ashfall from the eruption and some nice aerial shots

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/7724802/Ash-from…

Mulakot webcam showing approaching ashfall as the plume direction shifts with the prevalent low level winds.

@birdseye, thanks! Would a monthly archive of links work make sense? The wiki is updated manually (which is why there's a long list of undated links near the bottom - I got busy!) so I can do whatever makes life easiest for those who use the wiki. Monthly archives seems a sensible way to do it, as I'm not sure many are going back to look at the old stuff. Actually, I'm not sure anyone else is really using it, but it serves a broader purpose for me. ;)

# 175 Suw,
I have been looking at "your" page and been thinking...
The general information I would keep on the front page, as it provides easy access to the different links and basics.
Would it be possible to put the "per-day-info" in a seperat ordner, which kann be reached in the side-bar, under "Content"? At the end of the month, or after 2 weeks, the days together can form a "month" ordner.

I do like your page and I appriciate the work you put into it!

New ash concentration charts from the UK Met Office

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/volcano/ashconce…

These are actually better charts than the VAAGs they've been producing, but it's clear they are still ironing out a few kinks as some of the charts are blank!

Oh wait... my bad. the charts are for different heights, hence some being blank... clearly i need lunch!

Suw, if you keep the main links to your index page and sort and hyperlink the daily images/movies and official reports (IMO/IES, plume path forecasts) on separate pages - that would be swell.

I wonder if there is a calendar macro that allows you to link by date on a subindex page for each type of daily information type, that allows the reader to choose a date to view links? It's a temporal sorting/listing mechanism that allows links to remain hidden until cued for specific date/links retrieval.

That would make it easy to store links by each month, as this eruption may spin out for quite a while yet.

We are grateful for the work you put into maintaining accurate Eyjaf hyperlinks and archiving new links as they appear here, Suw! Thank-you!

This Eyjaf eruption is a historic first, with respect to orderly access and richness of daily information that is available to the interested public, news media, and agency and science professionals.

> I wonder if there is a calendar macro that allows you to link by date on a subindex page for each type of daily information type, that allows the reader to choose a date to view links? It's a temporal sorting/listing mechanism that allows links to remain hidden until cued for specific date/links retrieval. < (#187)

That's even better as my suggestion with the ordners. I didn't know that was possible. But it would be nice to be able to go back and look what on a specific day has happened.
As Passerby writes, there is so much material, and there will probably be much more before this eruptions ends.

Good afternoon!

The 14 EQs from this morning, all lined up (H. Sigurdsson's blg, map from the IMO):
http://vulkan.blog.is/blog/vulkan/entry/1055441/

@Anna Reykjavik The translator had a hard time with parts of this - could you (or someone) kindly give a rough idea please?
@PeakVT 150, thanks for the.pdf

@lavendel, @Passerby,

The calendar plug-in is a great idea!

*goes off to look*

Right, I found a calendar, and I have put it on the front page as a bit of an experiment. (I'll leave it there for a while so you can see.) The problem with it is that it actually increases the number of times you have to click in order to get to the content you want, so not ideal.

To give a bit of context, I'm a technologist and one project I am working on at the moment is searching for a way to track ongoing news stories such as this eruption. It will be quite a few months before we have anything to show for our work, but EyjafjalljÃ¶kull will be one of our first case studies! As soon as we have something for people to play with, I promise you will all get special 'alpha tester' passes to see what we're doing.

This means that I want to make the info I'm gathering now usable, but also fairly easy for me to extract. The calendar plug-in that they have actually makes it harder!

I will continue to gather information on the wiki - even though it's not ideal, it is simple. I think the best thing to do is split it manually by month.

Oh, and whilst we're talking dataâ¦ does anyone know of a good source for European airport closures?

http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html
Hekla cam showing the plume height & direction pretty well today

@suw191 Don't know how frequently this updates, but how about
http://www.airlineindustryreview.com/list-of-european-airport-closures-…

Sean Stiegemeyer's time-lapse art video of Eyjaf. is really making the rounds now. jonsi.com recommends it, the NY Times blog The Lede recommends it, mbl.is recommends it, and I'm pretty sure that every blog commentator here recommends it as well. I know I do.

http://www.mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2010/05/14/jokullinn_i_ollu_sinu_v…

@suw191 ref. 193- guess not, thought there'd be an update-to-daily link, no luck.
Airline people out there?

@Birdseye, yeah, I saw that page but it hasn't been kept up to date. I have a few connections in the airline industry, so will ask them.

Presume gosbeltisins translates as 'fissures'.

Haraldur's blog post confirms previously posted suspicions here that the N-S axis of miniquakes is the result of magma moving through the Eastern fissure system terminus, deep trending now. He seems pretty sure of this conclusion. We note that the Southern Transform Fault system continues to be very active, possibly indicating pressure transfer or similar response to deeper crustal flexing.

The calendar is an organizing tool, Suw. It's a logical tradeoff, is your goal is to provide access to day-by-day reports and data links. Your other problem is a time-sensitive issue (inactive links). Thank goodness modern servers have a very large storage capacity. Ten years ago, you were lucky if original source web pages were archived for just a few months.

You may have to capture webpage image and text content permanently, rather than simply linking to it.

@191 Suw Try this site. On the right it has information. You have to figure it out by code, but it is doable.

https://www.cfmu.eurocontrol.int/PUBPORTAL/gateway/spec/index.html

This site has the airport codes.

http://www.flightsimaviation.com/db/controls

@191 Suw Try this site. On the right it has information. You have to figure it out by code, but it is doable.

https://www.cfmu.eurocontrol.int/PUBPORTAL/gateway/spec/index.html

This site has the airport codes.

www.flightsimaviation.com/db/controls

@Carla Seattle 131 Good morning! I have a niece who lives down near Olympia...usually I see Rainier from the thruway overpass near the hospital in Bellevue, but I don't live out there. Sibs do.

@Passerby, in an ideal world the calendar would be simply a part of the presentation layer, pulling timestamped and semantically rich data out of a database. That's not what the PBworks wiki does - it looks like it is a third party plug-ing that is both presentation layer *and* data layer. That's fine if all you want to do is put data in, not great if you want to pull data out laterâ¦

You're right that link rot is still a problem. It did used to be a lot worse - I've been a web professional for over ten years now so I remember the bad old days. Thankfully most information sources and hosting services these days recognise the value of archival material. Ironically, the worst data sources i've come across so far are the UK institutions such as the Met Office, Civil Aviation Authority and National Air Traffic Services. They are releasing very little data, and none of it is structured. This is pretty abysmal, but about par for the course sadly.

The issue, of course, with scraping data and archiving images and text is copyright. I have personally been downloading as many of the videos as I can, mainly because .wmv files play so badly via my browser that to see them properly I have to download them, but also because I want to be able to go back and watch them again. The problem is, were I to then re-upload them I would be infringing copyright.

That does rather put one in a conundrum: do you archive to ensure continuity and potentially break copyright, or do you respect copyright and potentially lose data? I don't have an answer to that right now.

Another lightning strike on ThÃ³rolfsell cam.

@Reynir, 28 I poked around on the link you posted, and I came across what looks like a watch whose face is a photo of lightning in an ash cloud. I can't make any sense of the Icelandic. Can you translate this?
http://www.mbl.is/mm/folk/frettir/2010/04/22/eldgosid_komid_a_urskifu/

@ 191: Suw try this http://www.flightstats.com/go/Home/home.do for info

@dan #199 Which heading exactly is giving you the airport closures?

http://82.148.72.2:60000/control/userimage.html
Vestmannaeyjar webcam -what a difference from yesterday! But you can see the ash blowing around in the streets.

@204 Suw Far right next to the map under "Network Headline News" in red "Volcanic Ash Update".

Out for a while now. Back later,

...and a paper on atmospherics and ash plume interactions
http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~raman/papers2/Tupperetal.pdf

@Dan #206 Hm, yes I see. Not hugely useful, I must say. :( Guess the aviation industry not used to sharing info with the public.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1278647/More-volcanic-ash-Icela…

UK airports to close again and a couple of lovely pictures in article

#203: Sorry I'm a tad late. I was watching some Tommy Seebach videos.

Main text: "Eyjaf. has gotten attention from around the world, and even its own song. Now the glacier will also appear on the face of a watch. The watch designer Romain Jerome is working on a watch with a picture of the eruption and which has been names 'EyjafjallajÃ¶kull DNA'. / The watch will contain pieces of lava and ash from Eyjaf. and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. / Mr. Jerome has designed a Titanic-themed watch and a watch that is to contain moon dust."

Caption: "The watch will contain ash and lava from Eyjaf."

Most straightforward approach to copyright issues is to clearly acknowledge the source, after asking explicit permission to present/retain copyrighted images/information for public access purposes after the copyright holder has removed the images/data from their webpages.

Most sources will work with you, if you can show the use intent is not for commercial gain.

Agreed, the calendar layer should be link-request redirect to database, rather than providing presentation and data layer.

PBWorks DIYser community maybe amenable to crafting a calendar-database macro for us, if we ask nicely.

@Passerby, sadly, it's rarely that simple.

RE: Ryanair from BBC - Italy suing re:ash
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8684683.stm

For something completely different (but Icelandic) to make you smile -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EyI4p0yjDQ

@208 Suw Back for a minute. Just looked at the links and realized there is not much info today, because air space is open. I have seen it when Italy, Spain and Portugal were affected. Much more information in that column then. If I see closure I will post the links again, and maybe even try to decipher it some. :)
If you look at Terra modis from today from today you can see why Europe not affected right now.
http://i40.tinypic.com/10z1oj7.jpg

Gone again now.

Looks like there was a good deal of ashfall in Surtsey this morning, if the camera is to go by.

#214: You just had to fund their Jumpintopuddles.

Sigur RÃ³s is also famed up here for a movie soundtrack for the movie Englar alheimsins (Angels of the Universe).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZivyeW3drU

Instrumental improv around a radio announces theme. I think the original theme was written by jazzist and radio announcer JÃ³n MÃºli Ãrnason.

Warning-non-scientific.
i'm so used to the volcanoes of Cook Inlet and the Alaskan chain..... they blow up/they calm down.
This constant eruption is so new to me, like another planet.
i know ash fall... my heart goes out to the poor suffering people in the shadow of this catastrophe. And if You can't relate, maybe some compassion for the poor animals who can't relocate will touch Your heart.
i'm in a low spot now, i don't think i can look at this grey column looming over the Icelandic countryside any more.
The great people of the board are wonderful and apparently a lot stronger than i. i can't take it anymore.
over and out/
Best!motsfo

Looks like the UK Met ofc ash forecast carries alot of ash over Scotland about 1200Z on 16/5/10.

HERE we go again Europe. As "E" continues to shoot ash up to 24,000+ feet:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/vaac/data/VAG_1273942852.png

@Dan, it's not the volume of data, but the fact that it's rather buried. I was hoping for a regularly updated feed of open/shut airports, rather than an advisory buried in another feed in a module on portal... if you see what I mean. The information is rather obfuscated.

What would be idea would be a real-time feed of closures and reopenings by RSS. Or at least a site that gave the closures their own page.

#203) Translated by Firefox IM Translator:

ÃriÃ° to store ash and lava from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.
World / People | mbl.is | 22.04.2010 | 13:11 eruption established ÃºrskÃfu Send News Print News Print News Readings on reading the news article Share Share Share story on ...

Facebook Share Share Deliverables Cancel Twitter Share Share Digg Share on StumbleUpon Blog News Blog News Blog for the news story about two blogs Â»Powered Sig * Do you have the?
* HallgrÃmur Oli Helgason eruption established ÃRSKÃFU EyjafjallajÃ¶kull has received attention worldwide in recent days and even have their own song. Now the glacier is also mounted on ÃºrskÃfu. Is it ÃºraframleiÃ°andinn Romain Jerome is working to manufacture a wristwatch prÃ½tt is a picture of the eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull and has been named Eyjafjalla Glacier DNA.

On ÃºriÃ° contains ash and lava from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull and will be accompanied by a certificate as proof.

Jerome that developed at the time also acquired from the ship Titanic, and indeed also from the store on tunglryk.

"Smile. Things can always get worse."

@motsfo 219
If you come back sometime to check, we will be here - I understand - science and life are sometimes hard but the human sprit is strong and will survive and that is what keeps us all going in our own lives,I know from experience, and that is why I posted the Hoppipolla link. Resilience is in nature - green will come again to black land..houses will be cleaned or rebuilt if necessary - there will be hardship and suffering for animals and people both, but do you know anywhere that that is not true? In the meantime we look for humor and color and light in the darkness and seek to understand the science so that in future times we will perhaps better understand nature - we will never be able to control it, that is the human condition. We are not without feeling, I think, any of us. And I feel for you.

Does anyone have info on SO2 emissions from this eruption?

Mots, I think I can understand. I relate it to dust storms, though far different. You don't have to watch and maybe a break will help. Please come back. I will miss you!

@Henrik 168. That was a sudden burst of EQs that tails off: but I can't detect from the table a trend along that N-S axis in time.
Interesting that the southernmost extent of their N-S axis (63-62)is very similar co-ordinates to southern extent of Korf's linear W-E pattern. But latest EQs are at 25km whereas Korf's were around 10km. So we have a deep N-S structure intersecting a shallower W-E structure. (At the site of the conduit/vent?) Could this provide the two sources of magma you need for mixing? -one from 25km depth, the other flowing into it laterally at '10km'.

Is it me, or did it crank up even more in the last few hours?

Now, we have 10 m/s wind on Helubyggd... and the plume is climbing up vertically in a 40 km/h wind....

That's becoming frightening... Let's hope it's not only a prelude for something much more massive....

#228) Shh, do not give Big "E" any ideas please! Has the Iceland Met Office given us the daily update as of yet?

Articles < Seismicity < Icelandic Meteorological office

Go to site map.

Eruption in Iceland - frequently asked questions
Update on activity
Eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, Iceland
Assessment - 15 May 2010 17:25

The eruption plume is gray and the height is mainly ~ 6 - 7 km / 21,000 - 24,000 ft, occasionally reaching 8 km / 27,000 ft. It is heading southwest and later south.

Ashfall has been reported south of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull and ashdrift southeast of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.

An earthquake swarm started beneath EyjafjallajÃ¶kull just before midnight. In the period between 23:54 and 02:45, more than thirty earthquakes were located at depth greater than 20 km and magnitude less than Ml 2. A few more earthquakes were detected until morning.

No major changes are seen in the activity, the ash cloud is slightly higher than yesterday. Presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end.

Details in status report issued collectively by the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Institute of Earth Sciences at 15:00.

watch this funny cloud formed near the eruption
seeing from thoro cam looks like a big black hole in the middle with a white cload ring... on the hvolsv you can see thats nearly right in the ash plume path right side of the eruption

@228 Not a meteorologist, so probably wrong, but off the top I'd guess it has also to do with high barometer, dry air, and convection from the big cloud that moved in over the mt. earlier this a.m. Someone correct me?

How can a cloud formation still be in "formation" when another cloud is pathing trough ... ? that looks really strange never seen something like that .. cool ..

Somebody talked here about the "Little Volcano that Could" a few weeks ago...

Now, it's not a case of "I think I can..." it's rather "the little volcano with an attitude"....

It's really trying to show to its big neighbors it's got The Right Stuff.

Mixing height of each cloud layer is determined by thermodynamics. The plume is a much hotter air packet, so it can rise (and also has physically upward directed force behind it from gas explosions in the crater) through the local cloud cover and steam emissions from the melting ice nearby.

Aside: been having fun finally seeing our Mulakot host on the webcam. For weeks, I would see evidence (four-wheeler, pails, ladder, and dog, but no humans other than the occasional visitor loading/unloading car in the parking lot).

He is presently playing with a roof mounted camera angle.

I'd like to tee up the question about the effect of the wide spread ash fall on the north atlantic again. Do any of the marine biologists in the crowd have a prediction on whether the ash will have a detectable effect on plankton, algea, fish, marine mammals, etc. in the near or mid term across the north atlantic? And if not at the current level of ash production, how much bigger and more sustained would the eruption have to be to become detectable in the marine food chain?

thanks,

Doug #236 ... this info might be of interest:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10091568.stm

@228/234 I think you are right, from the mulakot cam it sure looks much higher and radar confirms it just shot up from 5.1km to 8.1 in the last 10min. Wonder how long it will keep this up.

You would be correct birdseye. The low pressure system that is sitting off the south coast has created a very unstable atmosphere over Iceland with some steep lapse rates. This in turn allows the parcel of air or ash in this case to rise very quickly and to a greater height.

@236 Doug McL
http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/23/10/885.abstract
http://www.physorg.com/news191587745.html
first article on Pinatubo ashfall at sea,
second article says someone is looking into your queston right now so maybe you can follow it?

@birdseyeUSA...

In an anticyclonic setting (high barometer), the airmasses are usually affected by subsidence (ie goes downwards), that should in fact inhibit the growth of the ash plume.

the plume acts like a large cumulonimbus cloud, fed by a ponctual heatsource below.. if the surrounding air is going down, ie stable, the convection should dissipate...

The best conditions for the plume to go very high would be medium-low air pressure ("marais baromÃ©trique" in french, I don't know how to translate it, about 1012-1013 hPa)..

You would also need high temperatures at low levels (plenty of available CAPE, convective available potential energy) to
provide the it the most kick to go high.

If you have high moisture on top of that, you also increase CAPE by adding condensing water, which releases energy , and make the settings more prone to lightning activity (water->ice at high altitudes=charge separation).

Not a meteorologist anyway, but I do chase storms ;)

Peter Cobbold #85 - juts a word of thanks for your reply to my posting at #77

@239,241 so, yes & no, I'll take it! ; ) I was looking a the gauges at HeklabyggÃ° ....and have been wondering all morning what would happen when the cloud moved in because it seemed different from the others in the area.

@236: You asked this question before. Answer is (I think) nope, not that much effect.

1. Submarine volcanoes add a lot more mineral nutrients than the occasional terrestrial eruptions. Answer will come from published reports, out of present study being conducted on marine impact.

2. Saharan dust that blows northward (Mediterranean) and westward (Mid- and North Atlantic). Depends on season, Hadley cell air mass movement). This dust is potentially a much more potent source of micronutrient inputs into marine microbiota community dynamics than volcanic ash.

@232: yes, I think more or less correct with respect to convection plume dynamics with passing fronts.

#241 is correct too birdseye but Iceland is not under a high pressure system at the moment as i pointed out, there is currently a low pressure system off the south coast heading for us here in Ireland so Iceland currently sits under an unstable atmosphere.

@221 Suw, I don't know if you are still here, but you are right, the messages concerning airport/aispace closures are indeed kept from general public. It is available via some sites, but is genarally in code and for aviation personell only. And even then, many airports will not issue a closure message even if the airspace above it is closed! This because it will affect the statistics of the airport in a negative way. And finally it is probably not for this forum but more for some aviation site....

@Peter Cobbold (#227). What caught my attention was that this new, deep swarm was in a different location to the one that has fed the current eruption. I.e. something new is happening below, one of the explanations of which is that a conduit to somewhere else has begun to open.

@Volcanophile (#234) That would be me about 5 weeks ago. The moral of that story was that little Eyjafjalla, wanting to be just like her big sisters Katla, Hekla, Askja and big brother Laki, once she got it right, found she couldn't stop coughing.

this eq silence is not good :/
since the start of this story we havnt had such a long one.

@ Dennis 248: that turns out not to be the case; I absolutely recalls periods of several DAYS with the EQ map totally blank and the summit eruption in full swing.

@Dennis not only that but hamonic tremor is the lowest its been for 4 weeks. Don't know what that means myself but anyone else have any opinions on this.

Okaaay... so being 'bjorked' is getting stranded in an airport because of a certain eruption? Well, I prefer to google(sugarcubes luftgitar) and gawk at BjÃ¶rk doing vocals in a video. Aside: luftgÃtar = air guitar.

#235 Aside... ;)

"Where are they going ???"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/50065377@N06/4609778560/

Wow the activity seems to have escalated on FLIR Cam.

http://www.flir.com/thermography/eurasia/en/data/?id=30533

Too bad one can't ask those touristy dudes to pick up the trash there.

In the bottom photos on Vodafone http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en from May 15, at 14 hours, from 7 to 17 minutes, there is some action. (I don't think it's only an effect of sunbeams.) Glacier pieces falling, melting and steaming, perhaps. (I grabbed screenshots but how to share? Does Picassa take screenshots or only photos?)

Just a question, evry time there is an earthquake swarm there is speculation about what causes this. Most think it is magma rising to the surface. But so far nothing in the eruption has dramatically changed even after all the (100+) swarms. So this leads me to think that either
1) they are not caused by rising magma but by subsidence of a (very) deep resevoir, if that is even possible at 20km?
or,
2) It is magma rising from great depht, but there is an intermediate chamber that acts as a pressure vessel which evens out the changes in pressure just like a pressure vessel in your central heating system would. Is there such an intermediate chamber underneath this volcano?
Thanks, Bas

@255 Jane2 There was a lot of blowing dust at that time, and I see what you mean, but it is along the 'knife edge' of the moraine rather than the glacier, I think, and I think part of the wind effects. Could be wrong -
BTW picasa doesn't seem to have anything from yesterday or today...

@Bas, You are probably right that the airports don't really want to share that information, but in my opinion it's increasingly important that the public have such data.

@jane2 what do you think you see? i have looked at the voda images for that period and can't see much more than windblown dust and sunbeams.

@Jane2, Picasa is just the uploads from the vodaphone cameras, closed system. I haven't figured out how to do uploads to this page w/o giving away all my personal info to some website (photobucket, tinypic,flickr) so...

@Bas [256]

There is evidence of dual level chambering over in the vicinity of VatnajÃ¶kull (see: "The Puzzle of the 1996 BÃ¡rdarbunga, Iceland, Earthquake: No Volumetric Component in the Source Mechanism" TkalÄiÄ, Dreger, Foulger, and Julian)

But... I have no idea if that geometry is/was present in this area.

Based interpolation of the graphs in "Geology and geodynamics of Iceland" R.G. Tronnes, the crust thickness at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is about 30 km, though I have seen other people here quote 20 km. At that depth things are plastic anyway.

Subsidence at depth? The deep batch at 5/3/10 â4:58 were about 15.8 km, the deep group on 5/10/10 â11:28 were spread around 19.8, and the 5/15/10 â12:06 were around 25 km.

Dunno... maybe you're one to something.

{note, these were eyeball centerings, no math}

Decrease in column height, comparison against a few hours ago, with cooling air mass at dusk evident on the Mulakot webcam.

Right now I find myself wishing I could sneak in and slip a gradated grey filter onto the apron cam in MÃºlakot.

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/

lets see where this will end.

so there are some othere cams around iceland ? on katla ? on vatna ?
isnt the best weather to view from space.

@My response to Bas [256]

Thinking about the mantle plume idea... the center is supposed to be over under VatnajÃ¶kull. The inferred flow from this would be directed out from whereever the plume head is. One interpretation for the fault pasterns around the proposed (proven?) plume event that caused the Columbia Flood Basalts (and possibly the remnants of which are tracking up the Snake River plain and terminating after a long line of caldera events at Yellowstone) are one example of what I'm referring to. If this is the case, then I would expect that if there is a dollop of the Icelandic crust dropping off into the mantle, and deeper and deeper quakes were evidence of this... my gut feel is that they would track away from the center of the mantle plume over at VatnajÃ¶kull and track further to the west.

These don't seem to do that. Though each major group is deeper than the last major group, they are interspersed by deeper events and sets that follow them that track upwards. None of which have a track away from VatnajÃ¶kull.

So... though it's a good idea, and may be proved out later. I can't really see it right now.

Note: Not a specialist, just a member of the audience. I could be very wrong.

A 1998 paper on EQs near BÃ¡rÃ°arbunga

http://www.seismology.harvard.edu/projects/unusEQ/Iceland/index.html

Is the plume actually getting a twist in it now or does it just look that way? (Thorocam)

@Jane2, #255: It seems to be ash caught by the wind, spotted by the sun and on top of that overexposured by the webcam. ;)

extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/15/14/07.jpg
extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/15/14/08.jpg
[...]
extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/15/14/19.jpg

Ashfall in the Westman Islands today (RÃV newsclip)

http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4497993/2010/05/15/0/

#261 Good evening! Some five hours ago the wind was heading West, and the plume came towards "us"; now it has changed to South, so I think plume height has to do with this shifting. Since ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell cam is aimed to South and MÃºlakot to SE, the plume appears to be shorter. The ash dust around the basis of the plume shows a bit of this mess winds are doing when shifting direction. But the eruption might as well have lost a bit of its strength, I don't know for sure.

Some aviation related stuff from the news:

...British airspace could close again from tomorrow morning until at least Tuesday due to the volcanic ash, according to Daily Telegraph sources in the Ministry of Transport.

According to the paperâs website, it is likely that airports in Scotland and the Souteast of England will close, along with Irish airports.

The British government has given the Met Office permission to make its five-day ash forecasts public online, replacing the 18-hour forecasts available until now.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/05/15/iceland-volcanic-ash-update/

@Anna, ReykjavÃk [265]

Very nice. Exactly what I was referring to. Thanks for the link.

@Dennis [263]

Dunno if I would be holding my breath on that one. That area is always having quakes, and it's over the plume head. The only real oddity that I can see is that while EyjafjallajÃ¶kull has what plot to an almost solid pipe down to the mantle, 66.404N, 18.782W : 66.669N, 18.007W : 66.54N, 17.614W: 66.292N, 16.736W have similar patterns, though most of them peter out at about 10 to 15km depth. At VatnajÃ¶kull (64.667N, 17.486W) there is another group, but they are more disperse than the others... this is the region referenced by Anna, ReykjavÃk's link.

@Anna #268 ~ Thanks for the link. I have been trying to get information on the locals and the ashfall. I'm afraid there is going to be huge health implications for these people. :(

@257, 258: Hour 14, particularly minute 11, when there's a bright white slash down the right side of the cliff, and 12, when a lot of ice could have hit the bottom and exploded (would it explode, though?). It looks like a spill (i,e., with gravity pulling it down) to me. Although it almost disappears at min. 13 and 14, which is how a wind gust could act. I don't think wind explains minute 11, though.

@Henrik 247. I see what you mean. Longitude of latest N-S line of EQs is similar to eastern extremity (-19.5 deg) of EQ swarm in Korf's plot (EQs of March 1 to 18th), but 15km deeper. Maybe at 25km deep Eyjaf is faulted N-S while at 10km depth the faulting is W-E? EQs in burst of 10 May were mostly at 18-20km, while now we see 25km. But still deep.

There seem to be a marked deficiency, both now and in the swarm, of EQs at intermediate depths, : roughly 10km to 18km. It is also puzzling how we got 1-10km deep EQs during the swarm without the deeper ones we see now being triggered: a deep magma intrusion coming from lower crust boundary should have triggered both I think.
So could the present deep EQs be the result of strain induced by N-S deflation of top 10km of Eyjaf as result of eruption?? Maybe the deep EQs are now being triggered by expansive (tensile) stresses. The middle zone, 10-18km acts as 'pivot' with little strain. This 'silent' middle layer is tighly constrained by surrounding crust, unlike the deeper zone 25-30km which is at lower crust boundary,hence less constrained. (To clarify: looking at an imaginary vertical section facing east: Eyjaf would be narrowing in top 10km as it erupts and deflates,causing it to widen at bottom 25-30km deep, keeping the same width half-way up at 10-18km where it is supported laterally by 20km thick crust )

So on this hypothesis present deep EQs do not reflect new magma rising.
And on this hypothesis the reason for today's shift east in deep EQs is because the west end upper 10km has seen most magma erupt in past 2 weeks, giving a western focus to deep EQs. Now the central zone is emptying a good test will be if N-S defation of THEY and GODA start again in next few days.

@Lurking, thanks for the references. The first one: The puzzle of 1996... actually depicts quite well what i tried to say. especially fig #6 with the dual magma chambers. well, it will keep me busy reading for a while. Just one other thought: I would think that by now the plumbing system beneath Eya could have been mapped pretty good. If it would have been a potential oil resource we would by now have a complete 3d map up to the centimetre....

@267, thank you Kenneth for the direct links. The gust at min. 11 was very narrow against the cliff, but minutes later there is no white scar of exposed and unblackened glacier edges, so, wind it must be. http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…

@Bas [275]

LOL...

"...Just one other thought: I would think that by now the plumbing system beneath Eya could have been mapped pretty good. If it would have been a potential oil resource we would by now have a complete 3d map up to the centimetre.."

Hey, now there's an idea, it would all come out pre-ignited and ready for catalytic converters and carbon scrubbers. Might have a rough time getting it into the combustion chambers/fire-boxes though...

If anyone could give me the link for the Mulakot web cam that would be great! I've so enjoyed reading everyones comments on here. It's been fun and educational!

#278 Here it is:
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalmulaen.html

@missyland 278
http://www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

#278
http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg

#278 Both #279 #280 lead you to MÃºlakot cam. The first link shows only one image, and refreshes automatically, the latter has four different angles, but no auto refresh.
Now, talking about Chilean volcanoes, just saw this image from Villarica webcam. I think it's a thermal image, or what?
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalen.html

#282 Oops! Wrong link. That one is Eyjaf's view from Hekla.
Now, the Villarica link:
http://www2.sernageomin.cl/ovdas/ovdas7/webcam_villarrica.html

Hi everyone. Looks like Baroarbunga is getting a little EQ activity today as well
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/

Link for the new MetOffice 5 day forecast for the ash cloud:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/volcano/ashconce…

GÃgjÃ¶kull Glacier Dust Time Lapse 15 May 2010 2 pmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWGlN1VldoM
Waves of dust roll down the glacier, and a big chunk of ice falls from the arch!

@Lurking 260
Refs to crustal thickness measurements here:
http://www.mantleplumes.org/Iceland1.html
http://www.dur.ac.uk/g.r.foulger/Offprints/crust2003.pdf
-- around 20km at Eyjaf

@d9tRotterdam, #286: Thanks for the video. I have been in the area today, and there was a lot of dust in the air.

@286d9t Rotterdam -Nice time lapse to show how the wind was whirling around today - I see everything (lots of dust/ash) except a new icefall..the chunk in the cleft has been there a few days....is there a new one today?? What part of the picture?

Iceland crust thickness measurements reviewed here:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/g.r.foulger/Offprints/crust2003.pdf
At Eyjaf:
Upper crust: 9km
Lower crust: 23km
MOHO: 20km
Interesting that EQ swarm pre eruption were at mean depth of8km, now EQ bursts are at 20-25km. Coincidence?

Mag 1 Quake under Hekla.

Shallow EQ under Hekla too.

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Four people at Thorosfelli. Lots of looking at the camera. One of us?

I was hoping to see some fireworks tonight, but it looks like it is just sending up ash. Maybe later?

Does anyone know how high the plume got today and yesterday? I know it got up there and I was wondering if it topped 30K. I haven't caught up with all the posts as I have been off for a while. I did check in this morning my time and had other things that needed tending to so I got to that stuff.

@Anna, how are the people who are under all the ash doing? I think about them often as well as the rest of the people in Iceland. It can't be easy living with active volcanoes and one that is creating a big mess for a lot of people. I hope everybody will be ok and that that animals will be too.

I will be watching between here and the cams.

I am waiting for much more before I even start thinking about Helka.
It is worth noting though, thanks guys.

All the Timeplapse for the FLIR Camera will be uploaded to youtube each morning.

YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/tintronix72

Please pick up that bit of trash while you're up there whoever you are.

@Diane: There's fireworks. Lava bombs and lightning. Keep watching.

Well, thar she goes. Lightning and lava in the air.

And what on earth was that lady doing?!

Just found an article that says "Scientists forecast decades of ash clouds" they are saying that 3 of the other Iceland volcanoes are on the verge of eruption.

Over reaction?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece

#297 trash -

I thought perhaps it was a wind marker for us???

299

#297 trash -

I thought perhaps it was a wind marker for us???

Posted by: JB US | May 15, 2010 9:48 PM

Ya know, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it is a marker of some sort. Looks like a ribbon. Likely plastic (wind would have shredded paper against the rocks by now). Possibly secured to the ground somehow (it hasn't blown away). Hmmmm. And there really has been a fair number of people up there, including a group of scientists. Surely someone would have picked up a bit of litter.

Steaming activity seem to be up a bit and I think maybe lava flow has increased. Twice I saw a red/orange blob to the left of the plume.

The Weather Channel (US) is right now starting to broadcast a program on volcanoes - "The Angry Earth" 10p.m. ET. Just stumbled on it.

You wanna bet against Thor Thordarson?

Hahahahaha! Not only is he correct, another frequency variation (90-100 years) in the historical proxy measurement occurs...for the same reason!

It's not happenstance, it's not random. These cluster events occur under very specific and reproducible conditions.

@Passerby #302 Umm... who are you talking to/about?

@Frito #303: He does that sometimes. I like to think of him of that wise but a bit crazy Uncle. Lots of good information and some really great links, but every once in a while... :)

@Frito ~ I think he was talking about the article I posted. Thor was the scientist in the article. :)

I was referring to #298...Janet's link that you obviously didn't follow through on, eh Gordy?

@Janet #305 Thanks for the reference.

@Gordys ~ *Jumps into the recliner and throws the blanket over* - I'll let you translate from now on. :)

Fairly calm out there with a fairly straight column.

@Passerby: Yes I follow through, and yes it MAY happen in our lifetimes, sometime it WILL happen. I thank you for sharing your knowledge and the links that you post in this forum...but every once in a while you post something that makes me go "WOW".

@Passerby ~ In all fairness to those who don't click on every link, it's been custom to do a refer-back to the article or post being referenced.

@Gordys ~ tip that bottle of brandy my way :)

#279,#280,#281,#282,#283, Thanks so much for the web site, really appreciate it!!!
#297- I think it is a wind marker as well. At first I thought it was a piece of rubbish, but then I realized it was a ribbon and figured as well that it must be for the camera and wind.

@Frito: I do click on the links(actually "right click" and open in new window) and see what is there before I post. I also read through the thread, before I submit a post. I have not been posting much lately because my time has been very limited...it's all I can do to read through the threads and follow the links.

It's hot here, no blanket tonight. ;)

WOW. Plume is off the top of the screen (Hvolsvelli) and straight vertical.

The sun light reflecing off the ash cloud on all of the cams is stunning. The intensity of the gold color on the Hvol cam is neat, but the beautiful red glow on the Thoro cam is intense! Nothing is as awe inspiring as raw nature.

Well, "E" is purely stunning. The ash plume has risen from 14,000 ft average on Wednesday, 5-12-10 to over 24,000 ft today (Saturday). I watched at about 2AM CDT today, several flares of lava and the amazing lava bombs. At about 3:30AM Icelandic local time and saw what appeared to be several lightning strikes inside the ash plume.

Now there is talk about several other Icelandic volcanoes are also awaking from their dormant state. That is truly scary!!

@Robert Bordonaro #315, Don't worry there's a lot of talk but no real hard data that this talk is based on. In this moment of extremely high attention to all things seismic and volcanic, everybody, including the least competent (that is referred especially to the mass media not to people on this blog) are tearing the most hilarious scenarious out of their mental drawers.

It does happen every now and then that there is a clustering of volcanic and seismic events in relatively restricted areas in relatively short periods of time. The 1902 eruptions of La SoufriÃ¨re (St. Vincent, West Indies), Montagne PelÃ©e (Martinique, West Indies) and Santa Maria (Guatemala) along with a series of earthquakes in Guatemala in the same year are one example. Another one was a series of eruptions at a number of volcanoes in the early 1970s in Papua New Guinea, and yet another the sequence of earthquakes and eruptions in Sicily in the fall of 2002. So yes, it seems that this does happen. But it does so very rarely and extremely randomly, not in a cyclic, repetitive pattern every so many years.

So, I would not place any bets on seeing another eruption at some other volcano in Iceland anytime very soon. Though it would certainly be exciting so see some nice basaltic eruption somewhere near Askja maybe, in a totally uninhabited area. In 1980 and 1981 there were repeated short eruptions at Krafla, and at the same time Hekla erupted twice; that was maybe the most dynamic two-year-period, volcanically speaking, in Iceland in the past few hundred years. Previously, there had been near-simultaneous eruptions in 1783 at Laki and on the submarine Reykjanes ridge, where a little ephemeral island was built.

One thing is certain, EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is looking impressive this morning, even though the eruption column seems to barely rise above the top of the frame in the HvolsvÃ¶llur webcam view.

#316) Thanks Boris, however the concern is being raised by a vulcanologist, see link below:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece
Not certain how valid his point is at this point.

@#317 Science needs funding. One way to raise interest of those having money is to paint scenarios in the media.

#316 Thanks Boris, we need your precious information and experience. We are all very much amazed by the beauty of this eruption that keeps our imagination going, so it's very important to have a wise voice to place our feet back on reality. As an avid observer, however, I daresay that, considering the wind shift we had yesterday, the plume does look higher and seems more powerful than previously (or the wind is weaker).
But I know how distant observation from afar plays tricks on us. Many thanks again.

@Robert, Thor Thordarson is without doubt an authoritative source, but the media are much less so. The fact that there will be future eruptions in Iceland is ... hmmm, not all that surprising. Some of these eruptions will produce ash as well, as they have done in the past. Really, not much new here.

I fear that Kultsi (#318) has a point, because we've seen similar things here in Italy recently - making a lot of waves in the news media about possible horrible scenarios in order to create public awareness and underline the need for funding.

Thordarson is cited saying there are cycles of increased activity, and that the late-20th century was a period of low activity - difficult to believe he really said that because the period from 1961 until at least 1984 was one of unusually intense activity with 16 eruptive events, including the 1961 Askja, 1963-1967 Surtsey, and 1973 Heimaey eruptions. In this period were the years 1980-1981, with two eruptive events at Hekla and five at Krafla. Low activity?

Certainly it will hardly be so that from now on for several decades there will be ash-filled skies nearly all the time. Even if Hekla erupts again soon, those eruptions produce a lot of ash only during the first few hours and then ash production diminishes dramatically. And the fact that Askja, Hekla and GrimsvÃ¶tn are "bigger" volcanoes as cited in the "Times" article, does not mean they necessarily make bigger eruptions.

Looks like wind is shifting. LOT of ash falling out.

On Vodafone, our friend the big pink spot is beginning to manifest. Rainbow on HvolsvÃ¶llur again.

What is that pink spot on the Vodafone cam?

@Chris (#322) that's just a flare (a reflection of sunlight on the lens of the camer), nothing to do with the volcanic activity.

#322 Light playing tricks in the camera optics; occurs every sunny day the same way.

Why is it that this gets asked every single sunny day?

I took a look at the GPS plots and those on the south side seem to be going up and down like yoyos.

Could this be a problem in acquiring satellites or distorted (reflected from the ash cloud) signal so the time base gets off? Similar odd readings cannot been seen on the stations not affected by the cloud.

Thanks. Never noticed it before. the FLIR cross hares were pointing in that general direction, but it looked too anomalous so I thought I'd ask! Kinda scary when it first appeared!!!

324

Why is it that this gets asked every single sunny day?

Posted by: Kultsi, Askola, FI | May 16, 2010 3:59 AM

Actually, I almost did as well. I caught it just as it was beginning and it was just a bright indeterminately colored point of light and happened to be just about smack-dab on the FLIR hotspot and the steam plume on the glacier. Gave it a couple of minutes and it became clear what it was.

@Frito #270 Just to clarify, the new five day volcanic ash concentration forecasts do not replace the volcanic ash advisory graphics - they are much more tentative but they do give us an idea of what problems *may* be heading our way. The VAGs are the last word on the ash cloud's progress and they forecast 18 hours ahead in 6 hour chunks.

@Jane2 #273 @Rotterdam #286 I'm afraid it's all just wind-blown ash and sunlight as far as I can see.

@everyone Does anyone have a link to a timeline of volcanicity on Iceland over the last, oh, lets say few hundred years? Just curiousâ¦

@318, @320, etc
If some scientists discover something which could have a significant impact on us, what exactly should they do to get more resources to research the matter in more detail? Isn't it better to make a good risk assessment and sensible preparations in advance rather than wait for an event and afterwards go into media announcing that 'look at our notes, we knew this was going to happen'? Science is fairly cheap compared to the cost of dealing with unexpected consequences.

Regarding the cyclic activity, it is a bit unconvincing that different sources have ended up with differing cycle lenghts, I think I have seen figures from 80 to 200 years. This could well be the result of looking at random data with different criteria. A limited amount of truly random data will show both clustering and long quiet periods. This could be interpreted as 'cycles plus some noise'.

As an amateur, I wonder if there is enough evidence to rule out any connection between events? If some volcanoes are geologically linked isn't it credible that action on one may affect the probability of the other(s) acting soon? A frequent claim is that basaltic action may dislodge silicic magma and trigger silicic events (e.g. VeidivÃ¶tn & TorfajÃ¶kull 1477).

I think it would be sensible to properly assess the volcanic hazards potentially affecting Europe. This should include instrumentation to detect any imminent activity. However, this is not enough as volcanoes do not always announce their eruptions well in advance. Based on statistics, one should evaluate credible eruption scenarios and use computer modelling to calculate the likely consequences. The present computer codes are pretty good in calculating the spreading of air contaminants. ...or has someone already done this?

@288 birdseyeUSA re: ice-fall in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWGlN1VldoMIt's not a huge slab like the one that appeared in the ravine a couple of days ago. Look at around 0:18 seconds on the video, at the arch - the chunk of ice falls directly into the ravine; or compare these two archived images... in 19 the ice is still there, in 20 its fallen.http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/… http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…

EyjafjallajÃ¶kull volcano eruption 15 May 2010 vodafone Time Lapsehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_jRamxAsrA

MAP 5.4 2010/05/16 08:55:46 14.405 93.179 35.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION
MAP 5.1 2010/05/16 05:30:58 -34.842 -16.062 10.0 SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
MAP 5.6 2010/05/16 05:16:11 18.400 -67.070 113.0 PUERTO RICO
MAP 5.3 2010/05/16 01:08:08 -51.866 28.253 10.0 SOUTH OF AFRICA
MAP 5.7 2010/05/16 00:33:08 0.443 124.607 141.1 MINAHASA, SULAWESI, INDONESIA

Regarding modelling, in the last few weeks I have come across Hysplit, the volcano ash modelling system, which you might find interesting. (Replace the X with t.)

hXtp://www.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT_info.php
hXtp://www.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT_ashhistory.php

But I think what we're seeing with the Times Online piece (and boy, I'd love to see Thordarson's timeline!) is the confluence of a scientist who wants to see governments/industry taking the risk more seriously (and money for more research) and the media, which struggles to deal well with nuance. So the scientist makes his points strongly, and the journalist bleeds out all the grey areas, and before you know it you have something... else.

That said, I don't think the Times piece is a scare story per se, but I do think that we need to really drum the point home to businesses in all industries that you can't go on pretending that an lengthy eruption (or string of eruptions) might not happen. I've written about this twice now, in my own area of expertise, telling companies that they need to get their act together regarding remote working, teleconferencing and cutting out unnecessary air travel because the calculation has changed dramatically.

Example: I'm supposed to go to Sweden to talk at a conference. Because of flights, it's a 48 hours turnaround (although I have done 12 hour turnarounds before and they are not fun). Now, if there's a risk that I'm going to be stuck in Sweden for days, that's a different matter to being able to rely on getting on that plane when I'm supposed to. I may cancel my trip, even though it's a rare paid appearance.

We're already seeing speakers dropping out of conferences on my particular circuit, so events organisers are going to find it harder and harder to put together a compelling list of speakers and to fill seats in conferences that rely upon people travelling from abroad.

This is serious stuff, but so far I've seen few signs of industry taking it seriously. Sometimes, a good boot up the bottom from someone like Thor Thordarson is not just good, but necessary, even if the science gets slightly exaggerated.

Too much caution can be a really bad thing as it allows companies to believe that they don't need to prepare for disruption. If/when that disruption hits, they struggle to survive and in the messy economy that we have now, that's problematic.

EyjafjallajÃ¶kull isn't an isolated event, it's part of a much bigger, broader system and how that system reacts depends both on how much solid data we have and how that data is interpreted. This is why I wish Eurocontrol were more open, why I wish the Met Office published more information - because without that data, it's too easy for businesses to say that Eyjaf just doesn't affect them.

Regarding modelling, in the last few weeks I have come across Hysplit, the volcano ash modelling system, which you might find interesting.

www.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT_info.php
www.arl.noaa.gov/HYSPLIT_ashhistory.php

Good morning. Where is Arne Saknussemm when you need him?

Another small earthquake on GÃgjÃ¶kull.

@Marko #329

If some scientists discover something which could have a significant impact on us, what exactly should they do to get more resources to research the matter in more detail? Isn't it better to make a good risk assessment and sensible preparations in advance rather than wait for an event and afterwards go into media announcing that 'look at our notes, we knew this was going to happen'? Science is fairly cheap compared to the cost of dealing with unexpected consequences.

Great idea - refer Haiti.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/article7127911.ece

Also from Times but the picture is very striking

Wow..cool. Dust devils in the forefront of the Hvols cam.

@332
Maybe this paper has more info on the time series: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jog.2006.09.005
T Thordarson and G. Larsen, "Volcanism in Iceland in historical time: Volcano types, eruption styles and eruptive history."
According to the abstract, they have studied 205 eruptions during the past 1100 years (ie. historical time in Iceland). These include 13 "fires" where multiple connected events take place during months to years. As a bit of trivia, the total magma output is estimated at 87 km^3 (DRE).

IMHO, there is a significant statistical probability for big eruptions in Iceland. It is a bit academic to discuss if this probability is roughly constant or varies with time.

Yes, something like HYSPLIT is what I meant by present computer modelling. One can run it online on a web server or download it to PC so the computing requirements appear quite modest. Maybe one could turn it into a screensaver and start a 'Volcano at home' computing project to perform an exhaustive study on the impact of volcanic eruptions?

@merlin #335 it is a lovely picture. I can't help looking at the plume, though, and thinking "Stegosaurus!" (sorta).

Unfortunately, my husband is supposed to be returning from Moldova to London tomorrow, and on Tuesday to go to Oslo. Looks like he should be able to fly from Bucharest to Oslo instead of coming home, but he's going to have to buy more clothes! (Though I have been warning him to pack more undies than he needs...)

@suw #328 Thank you. Yes, that's my understanding as well.

Re other volcanoes erupting, Discovery channel has a programme on "Icelanding volcano: the next eruption" tonight at 10pm GMT.

Here is a timelapse for yesterday afternoon made from the MÃºlakot webcam. You can notice a much higher plume than the previous days, often rising above the frame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8kkvZdirG8

I've also made a Vodafone timelapse for yesterday afternoon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKbC7ukPr14

@Frito Lay (#328): if you refer to the scientists who, after the Haiti earthquake said they'd known it, they not only knew it, they also published their knowledge and this was available on the internet for years. The Haititan government was also informed of the findings, but we all know there were no resources to respond in any way to the warnings of the scientists. So the problem is not the scientists - they certainly don't have the means to enforce antiseismic construction and they cannot rob the money from those who maybe have enough of it to render it to the noble cause. I'd sometimes love to have all the money our dear Italian prime minister Berlusconi has and spend it for research, prevention and education, and for making this world a tiny little bit better. Berlusconi apparently doesn't share such thoughts as do very few of those who own enough to make things a bit better.

@Marko (#329); Suw (#332): all funding that is available for the monitoring of volcanoes in Europe - foremost, Italy, Iceland, Greece and Spain - is certainly being invested in volcano monitoring, and the development of models that allow better forecasting of volcanic events and their consequences, be these ash plumes, lava flows, or pyroclastic flows. There is an incredible amount of publications available on these issues, and a particular intense effort is being made at Vesuvius where something like 600,000 lives are at stake in a future eruption.

A comprehensive article entitled "Volcanic hazasrd assessment in western Europe" (authors Chester, Dibben and Duncan) was published already 8 years ago, the link to the abstract is here: dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0377-0273(02)00210-X

The problem is that little is being done - also by the news media - to render the results of this effort public. And it is also certain that funding is always far too little to get all done that needs to be done.

But in reality models and computer software simulating the development, path and extent of volcanic ash plumes are being applied since many years in the Pacific - the PUFF software, developed in part by the Alaska Volcano Observatory is maybe the most sophisticated. Here you can see real-time PUFF predictions of the probable ash clouds from all potentially explosive volcanoes on this planet:
puff.images.alaska.edu/index.shtml

The system is also applied in real-time at Mount Etna and once an explosive eruption starts the air traffic authorities and Civil Defense are advised and furnished with the forecasts. It's something that is running all the time without the public knowing much of it. As matters are, in Sicily air traffic has been shut down many times and sometimes for weeks due to ash clouds from Etna, without all that discussion going on as in Europe and elsewhere lately. Same is true for the "Pacific rim of fire", which is affected by major explosive eruptions once or twice every year. The EyjafjallajÃ¶kull turmoil is unique and sometimes I think the volcano keeps going so long in order to teach everyone and especially authorities, governments and air companies a thorough lesson.

As usual, thanks all for the edifying 'overnight' discussion.

@Boris #342 Well said. The scientists actually had their conference right in Haiti about a year and a half prior and had broadcast their findings far and wide. If those with money had ever experienced an amputation with only a shot of cheap vodka, things might have been different.

@Marko #337 thanks for the link! will take a look soon as I have a moment.

Regarding 'Volcano at Home', this is something I've been thinking about for a while. I don't think that the ash modelling takes so much computing power that it would need to be split into bits and outsourced, the way that SETI does. But that doesn't mean that there isn't room for some sort of input by the public.

Have you come across GalaxyZoo.org at all? I wrote a piece on them for The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/15/internet-astronomy - and wound up getting to know them fairly well. Their initial idea was to take nearly a million images of galaxies and see if the public could classify them as accurately as professionals do. The project was a massive success and they are now expanding the model to other areas, via zooniverse.org. So now there are all sorts of different projects that you can join in with.

I would love Boris and Erik to chime in on this, but is there a possibility for geology to do this sort of thing? Basically, visual tasks that computers can't do make for really good citizen science projects, e.g. "Is there an X in this image" or "Count the number of Ys in this image" or "On what frame of this video does Z happen?".

There's clearly a group of people here who would love to contribute in a meaningful way, and Galaxy Zoo has shown that the general public are capable of making very useful contributions to science. Question is, what could we do?

@Boris #342 Thanks for the link to Puff. Nice moniker! It's clear that lots of work is being done, but science communication is tricky. Simply releasing raw data isn't always helpful as one needs the right understanding to correctly interpret it (you see this problem in the climate arena). So you need people who can release data in the right format and explain to the general public what it means - and there just aren't enough of them to go around.

I am a bit frustrated by the UK Met Office as they have not done a very good job of communicating their work. That leaves me in the dark and them open to unfair criticism from their opponents. There's a lot of criticism of the Met Office here in the media and from the public based on an anti-global warming agenda which aims to undermine the Met Office, thus (they hope) undermining AGW.

The news media is never going to get their head round science. You only have to read BadScience.net to see just how wrong they get even simple stories. And I say this as someone very firmly embedded in the world of journalism.

It is, as they say, a wicked problem but there are good people working on it so maybe we'll see progress over the next few years.

@Boris

I like your style of being non-alarmist and considering the spectrum of possibilities. I wish there was more of that sort of thing in the climate change debate (which I do not want to get into here).

What intrigues me is what you don't say. There are many volcanoes and a large range of possibilities. It is all very well to speak in terms of what we know well and what has happened in recent centuries, but how well does that limited experience cover infrequent, outlying situations? The geological evidence of past eruptions gives some indications. Do you have any sense as to the size of the space of plausible, unconsidered possibility?

@Frito #344, that's absolutely true, only that virtually all of the powerful and the rich have the means to protect themselves from ever living such an experience. And I see that Haiti is already quite out of the public conscience, like a nightmare that fades as time goes on. Here in Italy - and especially in Sicily - where the Haiti disaster should have served as a warning, nothing has changed in the attitude of administrators and inhabitants of non-antiseismic buildings. People continue to build new homes - often without permission, they continue to buy big SUVs - nearly always on credit - and they continue to spend the equivalent of 500-1000 US$ for a normal middle-class children's birthday party. They pass hours watching TV gossip shows about who's with who and who's cheating on who and who wears what. They don't spend money to render their homes safer, they don't elect politicians who promise to construct earthquake-resistent schools and hospitals and so on.

Though I must say that at least what little work some of us do at schools in this area seems to have a bit of an effect. Kids and even teenagers that everyone would think are interested in anything but questions of eruption and earthquake prevention, are incredibly curious and want to know all about it. So there's hope, and it must never be given up.

For all of you who are interested in some of the main research papers on volcanoes and volcanic hazards in Italy and work being done by INGV scientists also on other volcanoes, you might find this site useful: www.earth-prints.org/
You must register (it's free) to access the articles (most in pdf and a few in MSWord format), and then you use the "search" option typing whatever you're interested in, the name of a volcano or of an author. Many articles are available in the final published version, although of others you will rather get the submitted manuscript version.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece
the Times has moved the picture of the horses to this article.

confused!

@Diane NCa This info gives you an idea of population in various parts of Iceland - some breakdown by smaller towns.
http://www.citypopulation.de/Iceland-UA.html

@Suw (#328)

http://www.eldey.de/English/geology/eruptions-in-iceland/eruptions-in-i…
and
http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldgosaann%C3%A1ll_%C3%8Dslands

Weird. Everybody uses the phrase 'paradigm shift', but I have never seen/heard what it means. Is it one of those "Everybody Knows Already" kind of things?

@351 A paradigm shift is a change (revolution almost) in the way of thinking but brought about by events rather than just happening by itself.

#353: Thanks. I needed that.

#347 @ud: But does the Discovery Channel know where the next eruption will be?

@358. The classic text on paradigm shift: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. 1962, but very much worth reading.

@kenneth #357 Thanks! I knew someone would know!

More EQ activity http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

@Raving (#353), "What intrigues me is what you don't say."

Well, these are my thoughts on those Armageddon scenarios you're alluding to. Correct, the geological record tells us that every now and then something REALLY BAD happens, like a planetary body (an asteroid or a comet) colliding with the Earth or a gigantic explosive eruption that some call, unfortunately, "super-eruption". If something like that happens, honestly, we're in deep s**t. I don't know how much humans could plan in advance regarding such events. We're already failing miserably when it comes to avoiding disasters like the Haiti earthquake, so my confidence that anything can (or, rather, will) be done about preparing for the REALLY BAD things is extremely limited.

But luckily, the REALLY BAD things happen ex-treme-ly rarely, and during that tiny little life span that I am privileged to enjoy, I fear that my health and integrity are threatened by so many other BAD things that are so much more likely to happen that, frankly, I don't care about those REALLY BAD things.

I am worried about dying slowy and painfully from some mean disease like cancer or Alzheimer, I'm worried of ending up in a stupid car accident or slipping in the bathtub while taking a shower, or in some stupid terrorist attack (luckily the latter is unlikely in Sicily because no terrorist gives a **** about this place); I am worried about losing the ones I love or being blind and not seeing the volcano anymore that I live on, and there are many other things I am worried about much more than those REALLY BAD things. That's because chances that some of that stupid everyday stuff will hit me are about one hundred million times superior to something REALLY BAD happening, like an asteroid crashing into the Atlantic or some huge caldera system like Campi Flegrei or Yellowstone producing a gigantic explosive eruption.

#365 Boris, I like your idea's and phylosofie about bad and REALLY BAD. I think it is a sound way of looking at possible disasters and trying to cope with them.

@ all: thank you for the many interesting diskussions and links you all provide. It is a joy to come back to this blog and read up on everything. ( I do need to apportion a bigger part of my time to this blog - or I need to extend the 24 hours we have...)

@365 Boris Bravo, well said.

Magnitude5.1
Date-Time

* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 15:29:02 UTC
* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 03:29:02 PM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location73.387Â°N, 7.249Â°E
Depth10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
RegionGREENLAND SEA
Distances585 km (365 miles) NW of Tromso, Norway
640 km (400 miles) NW of Hammerfest, Norway
730 km (455 miles) NNW of Bodo, Norway
1515 km (940 miles) N of OSLO, Norway
Location Uncertaintyhorizontal +/- 9.2 km (5.7 miles); depth fixed by location program
ParametersNST= 77, Nph= 77, Dmin=>999 km, Rmss=0.6 sec, Gp= 97Â°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=6
Source

* USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event IDus2010wibg

Is this further proof of activity on the fault line, will the effects be felt in Iceland?

After I read the 'pedia entry on Mt. Redoubt, I had a small zen moment: The 'perfect' Icelandic name for said mountain. The name is Borg, which does have the meanings 'fortress' and 'walled enclosure'.

For those that live near Redoubt: I promise to not say "You have been Borged" when she goes off.

"But luckily, the REALLY BAD things happen ex-treme-ly rarely"

Actually, not really. See, the problem is that more and more of the world's population has become dependent on a smaller and smaller geographical area and a rather fragile infrastructure. For instance, one failed harvest in the American and Canadian plains will cause havoc globally.

If we have a repeat of the probable Krakatoa eruption of AD 535, we will likely see global misery. Unlike conditions in the 6th century, foods markets these days are global. The loss of the North American grain crop will push up food prices everywhere on the planet. The loss of two consecutive crops due to a single early or late frost each year would likely cause millions of deaths.

The US no longer has any grain surplus. Back in the 1960's and 1970's we had tons of surplus grain that could be used to avoid famine conditions anywhere on the globe. We shipped loads of this surplus grain around the world. Today we have none. Demand for ethanol for fuels, for example, has caused the conversion of much land that had been growing wheat and barley to corn production. In most states, up to 10% of the fuel you put in your tank is corn.

It took 10 years for climate to recover after the 535 eruption. All it takes is two single cold days at the wrong time of year to cause global catastrophe today. A June or August frost in Omaha could be devastating. Now that there is no surplus grain that can fill the void, people will find food out of their reach when prices double or triple or more.

The globe is living hand-to-mouth these days with little surplus to tide us trough a failed harvest.

#365 Bravo, Bravo, Boris. We humans tend to think that really important things are supposed to happen within our minuscule life span. It's historical: the desire for witnessing the real BAD THINGS is a way of thinking we are any better stuff than what we REALLY are. So, Armageddons have been predicted in almost every decade of historical time, and those who have predicted them are all gone, mostly of "normal" deaths. Wouldn't it be much more effective if we could really DO something within our reach? And go on humbly living our lives with generosity towards those who are in need? Yes: bad things WILL happen within the reach of our nose, you don't need to look any further, so, enjoy! Look at Eyjaf and think. Look for galaxies, count them all - there you get some perspective of our tiny-whinny armageddon. Thank you, Boris, for the little piece of spontaneous philosophy!

Actually Boris, much of the 'stupid everyday stuff' is controllable risk. Alzheimer's (neurodegeneration) and diabetic blindness (macular degeneration in diabetes) are modern diseases that are, to a practicable extent, preventable through lifestyle choices and practices. You and your government can minimize the risk of car accidents and terrorist attacks.

The incidence of common cancers, just like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, is largely a problem of vastly increased environmental exposure (comparison to historical and pre-Industrial Era) to potentiating agents, coupled with decreased cellular controls and repair mechanisms (this, too, is partly preventable where heredity isn't a predisposing factor).

For instance, despite my parents living for decades in highly polluted environments in Europe and the US, and spending the last 40 years in a location known to be naturally enriched in a potent cancer inducer, apart from minor benign skin tumors there is no extended family history of cancer, even in members who smoked and drank heavily.

That's positive genetics. OTOH, the same genetic profile when when coupled to chronic exposure to that natural cancer inducer, is implicated in the onset of Type 2 diabetes. Smoking is also associated with increased risk of late onset diabetes, while smoking and pollutant exposure are known to underlie cardiovascular disease and - and these do occur in the family. So genetics only gets you so far as a factor in mortality risk from common chronic/acute diseases.

Even when death comes for loved ones due to preventable causes, chances are you cannot intervene to stop it. Everyone dies, but most of us now can expect to live well into our senior years, a benefit of modern sanitation and drinking water treatment, and pharmaceutical/medical intervention in formerly devastating infectious diseases that caused nearly annual waves of epidemics in developed countries before 1920.

In no way are these risks comparable to the catastrophic scenarios of large extinctions from large asteroid impacts or mega-eruptions.

What Thor and others *are* worried about, is the probability of increasing volcanic activity due to glacier recession and climate change.

#369 Borg, burg, burgh, borough - not vastly removed from the English speakers' language; it would come across right well. Also, it's 'borg' in all the Scandinavian languages, so no problem there at all.

#370 "The globe is living hand-to-mouth these days with little surplus to tide us trough a failed harvest."
That sounds real enough to me.
And, unfortunately I can almost "hear" the global, silent, answer: "So what?"

@Passerby #372 - in general terms I share very much your positive views on life in general, I do live extremely positively and I am not really very much obsessed or worried about all the things I named in my previous post (#365). But I am still LESS worried about asteroid impacts and "super" eruptions. Even a Krakatau AD 535 scale event as mentioned by George (#370) occurs about once or less per millennium, and we've just had (less than 200 years ago) Tambora, and Krakatau again in 1883. Certainly, it might happen again next month, next year. But what could we realistically expect to be done about it? People are not stopping wars, although humanity knows since millennia that they're not good for anything (the one exception maybe being defeating Nazi Germany and its ally Japan in WW II, but I'm certain that could have been achieved as well in a much less bloody and devastating manner).

Passerby you're right much of those everyday bad things that I named before can be prevented or to some degree reduced or healed. Theoretically. In real life, prevention is a foreign concept to administrators as well as individuals; and although people know certain behaviors are possibly unhealthy if not lethal, they still go on with them - that's what we call human. I live in a place where this plain evident. High-earthquake-risk country and about 80 per cent of the current buildings (including schools, hospitals, barracks, hotels and other major structures) will not withstand a magnitude 7 which is likely to happen somewhere in eastern Sicily during the next 100 years more or less. You are right there are ways to fight (some types of) cancer and to tackle Alzheimer and other diseases. But how many people are there on this planet who can *afford* the necessary therapies? In many European countries the health service systems are currently subjected to tremendous budget cuts, as are, by the way, education systems in the same countries (Italy foremost). We're so far from correctly handling those "everyday bad things" that, once more, I really don't see what sense there is in wasting much thought on things that are incredibly unlikely to happen while we're there. All I do is hope that, if ever some REALLY BAD stuff goes down, it'll be fast and total.

Boris-extremely rarely is not correct. In fact they are frequent and on the increase. There is a section in the UN thats called less than affectionately the "end of days group" with the official name of EM-DAT. They contract into a university in France. All they do is monitor the occurrences of disasters, etc. for the last 100 years, and then prior to that and real verifiable recorded data, the previous 2000. Not much data for the previous 2000 but things like the great quake in Beijing that killed one million are in there. Frighteningly so.

We have cruised along for the previous 100 years and it has been and was fairly stable until the 70's. Then, one James Carter ascended to the presidency. We got into the save the world mode and the population started to rise commensurately. In almost and immediate and direct proportion, the number of natural diasasters started to rise. Coincidence? For some reason I dont think so. I personally believe that population is our major problem and the reason we are getting so stupid. Save the world simply adds carbon footprints and species load on the earth. Then nature/god if you believe as I do takes them off to keep some semblance of balance. Wont argue the existence, I am just putting this out there so everyone can see the same things I do. Remember I am an IC-800 NGO and in the business of disaster relief from the air side. All I can do is respond to what I see and prepare for it until it does show up.

As for the data the DOD took this and applied the natural data to the war data and came up with an extrapolated figure that showed something astounding...As we began to save the world, wars and natural disasters went up. Human rights? They actually started going to hell if you DID try to do something about their conditions. Almost a Catch-22. Take a look at Burma.... Human rights is something they read about in a stolen newspaper.

But the numbers arent all that wrong in history then or now. What caused the Dark Ages? Vulcanism, comets, bad ju-ju? We know the population was growing, food supply growing with it and splat like a bug against the windshield of time, volcanoes went off then we got smallpox, plague what have you. Humans started taking the hits. Its the macro rather than the minutiae and arguable to the nth degree.

You have to dig a bit but here is the link for 1900 to 2008 and you can draw any sort of conclusion you want from it. It is though scientifically done to produce the results with the only variables being how you read them or question the numbers of people that died. My contention is simple and it is that the AGW's and Anti-AGW's are totally irrelevant in the point in history we are right now. That would include my anti-AGW self. Pro or against, ice records and hockey sticks mean NOTHING if we should see a human die back. Bragging rights only and its very simple, get it right or wrong and you still will see the die back. AGW's see dead people, Anti-AGW's see dead people.

We just dont know their names.

This is the reason that climatology is more important than meteorology. You get to take the temp of the planet with the latter, but turning that into a trend sometimes is problematic. If this eruption continues, we get another Icelandic fizzy factory going and then some other mug goes...Its going to cool and thats the fact of it. They can argue all they want, but in history cooling was directly associated with vulcanism. The effects are also known and they are:

Dead people and species.

The link: http://www.emdat.be/disaster-trends

Do hit the home page cause this is a neat little site. Reporting of disasters really didnt come into its own until somewhere about the 50's, so I will be first to say that the numbers might not be right but there is easily a trend before during and after the 50's. Take a look, draw what you want from it. But you are in Italy and I would be one of the first to say something simple-Vulcanism did what to Herculaneum and Pompeii? And the climate did what afterwards? Toba blew and what happened to humans? Santorini blew and what likely happened to the Minoans? People rarely died directly from a volcano, it was the after effects.

Its all about the die back for me and direct effects of volcanoes and the plates for the large part. We just had a pandemic...We just had another tsunami and we are going strong on several pacific islands and in Russia. Want to bet on when the next one is? As for the next pandemic I give that about 3 years and worse than ever...But thats just me folks.

Until then I get to watch this awesome sight in nature of Eyjaf. I couldnt begin to fathom what a Grimsvotn or Hekla eruption would do to the climate... Lets just say that they would be busy down in the end of days section and let it go at that. For me its irrelevant. So they record it and there will be fewer to read the data if able to later.

Now thats something you can bank on.

I don't know the origin of this one, but I've come across it in very different contexts. It is very good advice irrespective if you're into religion or not:

Lord,
Grant me courage to change what I can change
Serenity to endure what I cannot change
And wisdom to perceive the difference

Magnitude5.2
Date-Time

* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 16:39:33 UTC
* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 04:39:33 PM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location73.475Â°N, 7.384Â°E
Depth10.2 km (6.3 miles)
RegionGREENLAND SEA
Distances590 km (365 miles) NW of Tromso, Norway
640 km (400 miles) NW of Hammerfest, Norway
740 km (460 miles) NNW of Bodo, Norway
1515 km (940 miles) N of OSLO, Norway
Location Uncertaintyhorizontal +/- 16.3 km (10.1 miles); depth +/- 4.1 km (2.5 miles)
ParametersNST=195, Nph=199, Dmin=621.2 km, Rmss=1.26 sec, Gp= 47Â°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=6
Source

* USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event IDus2010wibl

and another one

Question: since the last 2 hours I can't get a picture on the vodafon-cam. Am I the only one or are there others with the same problem?

Boris, I wasn't too keen on George's post, but he has a point that I've raised here before, on the perils of interdependence of non-sustainable global markets and perilous overpopulation burdens (social economies-of-scale).

We've just had a couple of large disasters that have drained the public relief coffers, much of it coming from the US and Europe, nations still struggling with post-bubble financial collapse. Our global disaster response funds aren't going to withstand another Haiti, but we face it anyway - in Italy and Sicily, and the capitals of Iran and Turkey.

The president of Iran, a civil engineer, is all too aware of this risk, but hasn't been able to persuade the ruling clergy of the need to relocate the 18-million inhabitants to safer location. Turkey's geologists and engineers are also well-aware of looming seismic hazard in densely populated shanty-towns and 80+% urban building code noncompliance, but they too are ignoring risk as did Haiti because of lack of recent activity.

Common cancers are nearly all avoidable; it doesn't cost much in dietary habits and changes to sedentary lifestyle substantially reduce risk by prevention of tumors, not medical intervention after the tumors arise.

All of the addictive habits occur in response to chronic physical and mental stress, neurochemical receptor and gene promotor polymorphisms (altered chemical receptor structure-function and gene activator expression that is either genetic or quasi-genetic - epigenetic - in origin) and inappropriate behavioral coping mechanisms. Functional behaviors that reduce addiction risk can be taught, and reinforced by social conditioning, even when alcoholism/smoking and drug habits run in families and entire cultures - like Russia and Eastern Block nations.

Your answer, Boris, points to the fragility that we face as an interdependent planet in coping with multiple large-scale disasters, in a short time-frame, when global economies are far from robust and climate disasters still frequent enough to drain national and regional food and relief surpluses.

I don't see China coming to the table with sizable relief efforts outside of their own borders. Despite their prosperity, emerging Asian giants still have enough hunger, poverty, disease, environmental degradation and class- and ethnic-strife within their borders to keep them fully occupied with internal matters.

Really bad stuff need not be of mega-scale to cause global meltdown, in economies, food supply, public health status. That is what George tried unsuccessfully to convey, because he chose an example that seems exotic and improbable to us.

Except that the climate conditions of the Medieval Warming are uncomfortably close in scale from our present global temperature trends. Case-in-point: the past four months are the warmest late-winter and spring on record. And that's during an historic solar activity minimum.

http://www.norsardata.no/ - An earthquake monitoring site in Norway (in English). Its counterpart in Norwegian is www.jordskjelv.no

#379: You're not the only one.

Hi all, check http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/

@All - THis conversation reminds me of when I was a child listening to a group of scietists and others gathering into the wee hours in a tiny house on the side of a mountain at lat. 72.14N 23.55W. Fine conversation. Good company.

Meanwhile Eyjaf is starting another shallow run of quakes, by the looks of it...

Swarm in progress at Eyjaf? Same reloading pattern, deep movement, shallow thermal or gas shocks. Perhaps connected to large MAR earthquakes to the north, suggesting a larger pattern of crustal flexing.

@Lavendel 379 None here, either.

Even a repeat of the summer of 1816 would be a problem. Since about the beginning of the common era there have been major disruptions about every 600 years or so with lesser disruptions at roughly 200 year intervals where something on the planet changes dramatically.

As for climate, since about AD 0 we have been in a general cooling trend. The MWP didn't get as warm as it had been during the RWP. This warm period didn't get as warm as the MWP (and has already started to cool). Much of the current "warming" has been discovered to be errors in the input data. Winter data added to the record with the incorrect sign (negative temperatures reported as positive temperatures), boreal autumn months with duplicate temperatures from one month to the next (example, October monthly average temperatures reported from Finland and Russia were actually September temperatures), urbanization issues where urban stations are reported as rural and no correction or the opposite correction made for UHI, and finally, individual site issues where recording stations are sited incorrectly (directly in the jet blast of airliners running up their engines for takeoff at Rome's airport is a favorite example, as is the University of Arizona station located in the middle of an asphalt parking lot).

But climate always changes. It is rarely stable. It might fluctuate for a time around some average, but it is always warming or cooling. In North America, there is rather well documented 60 year cycle having to do with circulation patterns in the Pacific Ocean. We entered the "cool" phase of that cycle a couple of years ago. Continental US temperatures for the past 12 months have been just about at the average for the period from the 1890's to 2000.

The last image from the Vodafone cams is timestamped 14:23:36 today.

Has anyone got a link to the Hekla and Katla cam. Ones i were using have stopped working. Do they work for you?

Thanks for the feedback, guys.
Good to know I'm not the only one, but a pity it isn't working. The picasa site hasn't uploaded picture since 2 days.
I'm missing the view...

According to the evening TV news, Eyjaf. has emitted ca. 250 million cubic metres of tephra.

For total dummies like me, a glossary like this is a handy resource:

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Glossary/framework.html

There's not much to see in this moment, everything is in clouds - you can see this via the working webcam at HvolsvÃ¶llur:

eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-hvolsvelli/

@338 pyrotech -
http://www.heklubyggd.is/vedur.htm

#388 @pyrotech: Nope. The direct mms: link fails, too.

I did go over the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull area today. I did not see the ash plume or the eruption due to cloud cover. But I did get a little bit of ash fall and I did hear a thunder after a lighting happening in the ash plume.

I took pictures and video that I am going to upload on the web when I get home. I took the video and the pictures on my mobile phones, so don't expect great quality. But I hope for the best regarding the pictures.

perhaps this was posted some time ago, but it ties in to future considerations expressed here re: monitoring subglacial eruptions-
http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/myndsafn/2005EO260001.pdf

@376: Plague predated the Dark Ages and first appeared as an epidemic in Egypt three thousand years ago; it later spread from the natural endemic foci along the Southern Trade Route (Africa-Asia) carried by ship rats to a string of heavily populated ports, but long before, this ancient disease spread to new foci overland, along the Old Silk Road caravan routes.

The Dark Ages refers to economic and cultural decline in Early Middle Ages, and was caused by two factors: the collapse of the Roman Empire trade (a function of loss of regional food and trade autonomy, and finance-draining and civil and ethnic wars) and climate change, which may have been acerbated by volcanic eruptions, but was not *caused* by it.

What happened in the 20th century was massive population increase brought about by large-scale agriculture that resulted in a trebling and nearly quantupling of the global human population in a little over 100 years.

This was brought about by medical and civil infrastructure technological innovations that markedly increased life expectancy in infants and adults (mentioned in an earlier post) and major crop production improvements beginning in the 1930s that included: farm mechanization, fertilizer (offshoot of the Haber Process, 1935) and later agrichemical (1950s) and improved crop cultivars (50-70s). This was paralleled by large-scale irrigation project development, a multi-billion dollar investment of 1930s-1950s in the US, boosted by energy demand to support wartime industry in the Western US (WWII).

During this time period, energy production and innovative refining of oil also boosted modern large-scale production of petrochemicals and fuels manufacture (WWII legacy), infectious agent and pest-control agents (legacy of WWI ammunitions, toxic agent and German dye industries) that rapidly increased the rate of food production, disease control, and industrial manufacture of goods and began post-War, mid-20th century evolution of global markets and trade.

The last big waves of infectious diseases were brought under control in the 60s-80s through large-scale (regional-global) immunization / social welfare programs that had their antecedents in Europe (1700-1800s) and Europe, Japan/Australia and North America (late 1800s-early 1900s).

Medical intervention and large-scale food production that encouraged global excess fostered very fast population growth. This no longer checked by 'large scale die-off' that occurred historically (as you put it) from infectious disease and food shortages in the mid-later 20th century. However it is lack of adequate sanitation, medical and economic base, coupled with resource degradation and climate-induced food shortages, that resulted in numerous small-scale ethnic wars and destabilization of the poorest economies in Africa, Middle East and SE Asia that cause cyclic social and economic instability and collapse.

The pandemic isn't over yet, as least not officially per WHO advisories issues just this week.

An overview of the flight disruption: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8625813.stm

PB...

http://www.haciendapub.com/faria4.html

And no one asserted that the Ages were caused by it, but basic economics along with vulcanism and its effects just kept the ball rolling. Sanitization is a human operation, but without food you dont have humans. It was and is as I said an arguable point. But the die back isnt. It happened. The ball was put into play.

In fact that ball is still rolling and there are two things that the climate will do if this continues. Cooling and acid rain will fall on EU crops.

The acids do a job on the fertilizers we use now and create all sorts of unwanted effects.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020125073740.htm

Add in another big volcano going and the issues you indicate will come to the forefront...Again. Cant feed them oil. Note the drop off and then the rise in the below graphic. Are we due for another plop? Purists will argue all of this to the nth degree and I dont disagree with a thing they say because it is purist. But mostly, purists get it about 1/2 right and I rarely try to dissuade them from their ideas.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p109/Arthur_Vandelay99/DarkAges.gif

At 250 million m3 the Eyja ash/lava emission has already exceeded that of the 1821-23 eruption.

But it's still much less than Katla in 1918 (700 million m3).

RÃV newsclip: http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4497994/2010/05/16/1/

The farmers are moving their sheep away now. The fields are in such a bad shape in the areas that have been hit the hardest that there's not going to be any hay-making season this year.

RÃV newsclip: http://dagskra.ruv.is/sjonvarpid/4497994/2010/05/16/0/

Paper shared from a previous poster has a nice Contour Map of Crustal Depths Iceland
http://www.dur.ac.uk/g.r.foulger/Offprints/crust2003.pdf
Iceland Map is overlaid on this contour map of crustal depths.

This map helps see the various depths of Icelandic crust when looking at the EQ map.
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/

Magnitude4.8
Date-Time

* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 20:23:04 UTC
* Sunday, May 16, 2010 at 08:23:04 PM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location73.472Â°N, 7.225Â°E
Depth29.8 km (18.5 miles)
RegionGREENLAND SEA
Distances595 km (370 miles) NW of Tromso, Norway
645 km (400 miles) NW of Hammerfest, Norway
740 km (460 miles) NNW of Bodo, Norway
1515 km (950 miles) N of OSLO, Norway
Location Uncertaintyhorizontal +/- 17.4 km (10.8 miles); depth +/- 7 km (4.3 miles)
ParametersNST=145, Nph=150, Dmin=622.3 km, Rmss=1.05 sec, Gp= 79Â°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=6
Source

* USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event IDus2010wib3

Third today

anyone seen this timelapse from 1st/2nd of May

found the link on Steves Digicams front page

not sure if its been posted before - but the depth of the HD timelapse is amazing - I'm in awe

http://www.steves-digicams.com/news/amazing_time-lapse_of_the_icelandic…

@Passerby (#397). As a historian, let me just say that your presentation is not exactly factual and that your conclusions aren't accurate either. Since this is a blog dedicated to volcanism and to present a correct description together with accurate conclusions would consume far too much space, let's just leave it at that, ok?

@400: Yes, after I saw your post I read news reports from yesterday that large farm vets have been pushing for sheep relocation due to the health risk from overcrowding and fine particle exposure in farm buildings.

I empathize with the farmers plight, as there is little choice when considering the welfare of their flocks.

@Reynoi, Pyrotech - re:388 cam link, it still works for me & worked right before I posted the link - Dunno.

wow, after being in extended lurk for a while, I finally caught up on the discussion here and very much enjoyed reading all the above posts.

Re volcanic eruptions, even big ones (this is the Eruptions blog, right?): I actually feel quite positive about human's ability to survive and adapt to the damn things. Why? Take a look at just how long rather advanced civilizations have existed in New Guinea and New Britain and then check out how many pretty sizeable eruptions have occurred in that region in the last 40,000 years. It's pretty awe-inspiring. (and while we are on the topic, re mega eruptions in the last 1000 years, don't forget Baitoushan (also known as Changbaishan) or even Taupo, both VEI 7, neither of which resulted in the end of the world, as I believe).

And I suspect the same holds true for most other natural calamities bar a nearby supernova that zaps us all into oblivion or an asteroid strike (i.e. Boris's REAL BAD scenario).

No, the more imminent threat that I see lies precisely in our loss of independent "islands" of civilization, as George was suggesting. We have all become so interdependent on each other and have, within about one generation, lost the capacity to look after ourselves that I doubt we COULD cope with such a calamity now if it occurred. The prospect of war or even starving hordes armed with guns roving the countryside looking for food scares me WAY more than the Eifel suddenly erupting on us or even some caldera system going off big time.

The point being that though a mega-eruption might trigger social collapse, it is not the main cause of it. The cause lies firmly and truly in the society we have created - and that is based on the faulty assumption that the same bounty (and more) will be available next year to feed us all when this patently cannot be the case. Resource scarcity (or to put it another way, over-consumption) is the real threat I see, not natural disasters. I seriously do not want to witness 7 billion people squabbling over food when a good number of them have guns and the others do not and most natural ecosystems are already strained to breaking point.

/ok, off my soapbox now.

Getting back to more profane matters, I still haven't got any answer as to:

a) whether this batch of magma contains more gas than Fimmvorduhals (certainly looks like it!!)

b) if so, why?

@Birdseye, #356, thanks. That gives me an idea of where and how many are affected by the ash. I will study it more.

Henrik, #377, it is from a poem and is often quoted. The original text reads this way: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

I believe it was written by someone who was in recovery from alcoholism. There are other verses, but that is the one that is quoted a lot.

MRK# 376, correlation is not necessarily causation. We have gone around and around on this and there are those of us who believe one way and others other ways and no answers come of it. Human nature is what it is and rarely changes. Only cultures seem to be what changes and that is a discussion for another blog or chat room ,not here. This is about volanoes and what they do and when it comes down to it, there is nothing we can do about volcanoes. I suppose we can be aware of what they can do and maybe mitigate some of the damage, but that is about all we can do. Carter? He can't control the population and I don't think he had anything to do with it.

the last quake or were it 2 ? are removed.

@Passerby post 397.

You don't think whatever caused the major tree ring anomalies in the years around 540 AD had anything to do with it?

David

Thank you everyone who replied about Katla and hekla cams.

Fantastic to see so many people on here share their knowledge and thoughts - novice to expert.

# 406 @Reynoi any chance you can post your direct link to the cams.
It seems that the link i had no longer works, or they have limited access to locals only.
Any help appreciated
I was using http://www.ruv.is/hekla and http://www.ruv.is/katla/ neither are working for me now

new report out..
http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Eyjafjallajokull_status_2010-05-16_IES_IMO…

Fog and clouds deny
Visibility is nil
We need a BIG fan

Big Fan coming soon
We will see Eyjaf again
Fog and clouds be gone

On the Mila Poro cam I think it is ash not fog as you can see the stones are coverd in ash I maybe wrong no expert just an observer

On the Mila Thoro cam I think it is ash not fog as you can see the stones are coverd in ash I maybe wrong no expert just an observer

I think you're probably right, Ruby. One minute it just looked like fog and the rocks were light and bright - then I refreshed and it looked like nothing I've seen before. Eerie.

Hence my revised haiku...

Ash and clouds deny
Visibility is nil
Watch for falling rocks

Diane, the amount of foreign aid tripled under Carter. You know those indigent masses across this planet who would have thrown you to the side for a new goat or a male child. We still do this today-Now is that politically correct? Toss female babies into the ditch? I sure wouldnt want causation to be confused with anything by gollee.

Look, It was a timeline point is all and those are the facts. Under his administration the US tanked economically and we were sending money and food out of this country as fast as we could box it up. Its not an economics discussion. My point is that nature may just be taking its course here either cyclically or at the behest of a different direction. What is the cause? Dooo tell us.

Yes, man can adapt to just about anything but it is about equilibrium. If the number of people on the earth dwindle due to climate change from human operations or from volcanic activity the effect is still the same-dead people. No food means no people or at least people down to equilibrium.

And as a former military person it really reads Diane.

"Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to properly hide the bodies of the people who pissed me off"

But I am so glad you have appointed yourself the queen of Eruptions Diane. Thats the problem with some folks-dominion. This is as germane to whats happening as it gets. If this starts getting out of control with continuous or addtional eruptions California might be one of the first places to go. High level transport of ash and SO2 could take out the farmland in the already too dry San Joaquin with less rain or make it so acidic that it cant be planted. At some point thats got to be acknowledged-but its a volcano blog. I guess that goes to the agrarian blog?

Hey, ever noticed those disappearing glaciers in Alaska as they drop into the sea as they have been for millenia? Well lets see I have always seen ash deposits and followed by HUGE layers of ice between the next one. Oh yes, its about volcanoes for sure cause aint no load of human kind made stuff going to make soot layers 4 feet thick and thats after compression... But thats just me.

The fact that they are moving sheep means that they are concerned for the supply of food and wool. Aircraft flying over the top are also modifying their behavior. Its simply starting to cost more and more to do the same things. What if Grim kicks off and covers the grasslands? Well we might have to start feeding Iceland. So its simple economics really. Its all in how you look at it.

Volcanoes+Ash+SO2 all in high amounts=Dead People ..... History

@MRK #419 Perhaps you could be as civil to Diane as she has always been to you. At least give it a shot.

Thanks in advance.

@411: that would be Rabaul
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_dangerous_volcanic_eru…

Boris may know more of the historic eruptions, but my recollection is that in the very early Christian era before the fall of Rome, there were numerous eruptions in Italy (per the GVP historic eruption catalog).

See Fig 3, 2000-yr corrected temperature record based on tree-ring proxies.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/02/11/a-2000-year-glob…

The figure shows a sharp jump in global temperature record at about the time of many of these VEI-6 eruptions; it also appears to match the pattern of reported Icelandic volcano eruptions, listed on the wiki page linked by someone else in a earlier post here today.

MRK, where on earth did you get the idea I appointed myself "queen of Eruptions"?! Simply, NOT!

BTW, sounds like you adhere to the three S's: shoot, shovel, and shutup. And I did not vote for Carter or the present president and I am not politically correct, either.

Enough said.

Heathrow and Gatwick airports close
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8685913.stm

Just seen lightning on Hvols cam

@HRH Diane ;) #422 Don't let MRK get under your skin. He's just looking for attention. If he really had important work to do he wouldn't be spending his time posting all over the internet, especially on a blog about volcanoes talking about ... um...what is he talking about? Never mind. I don't want to know.

I wanna be a Princess. Can I be a princess?

Frito #420, thank you. I got a bit hot under the collar so answered with some ire, but I believe everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe. No one has to agree with what I believe and I don't necessarily agree with everything written here, but I do try to be civil. I have tried to not call anyone names as that does nothing for good discussion.

Anyway, I have been enjoying watching the eruption and I hope volcanologist will learn a lot from it. For the sake of the people of Iceland, I hope it stops soon. Maybe if it would just go to some really cool Strombolian eruptions without all the ash. Now that would be a real show as I have seen Etna do.

@Boris, I know something about it becoming blaise after a while as I have taken some breaks from the blog. LOL I also agree with a lot you have pointed out. I watched a program on volcanos today and they mentioned Long Valley and said anyone within 75 miles would be affected. (By way of crow, I probably live within that 75 miles.) They were talking about a possible eruption sometime and I don't doubt it, but it is fairly quiet right now. I don't think it will do anything soon, but if it starts quaking like it did in the '90s, well, all bets are off. It could go. Probably not huge, but enough to create problems. If something does happen, it will probably be Mammoth Mountain even though the swarms of the '90s were mostly over the resurgent dome area. With the CO2 releases and the thinking there is a large reservoir of CO2, that spells explosive activity. If the magma and the CO2 come together with enough pressure, it could get very interesting very fast. I keep watch over that area as well as other places. I have been to Long Valley and it is one of the most interesting places to see. Lots of neat stuff there to see. I encourage anyone who is interested in volcanoes to go there if they can.

I know my post @424 was'nt the most exciting, but I thought I would lighten the conversation a bit....but I did see lightning, and now I'm off to bed as it is 12.45am in UK here and not much to see on cams, so goodnight all

Ruby, #427, I will have to go there and watch! Thanks for the heads up.

@Frito: I thought you were a princess. :)

Awww ... thank you, Prince Gordys. Nice white horse you got there! :)

@Ruby #424 It's the most exciting news I've heard all day ;)

OK going back to looking for stuff in the pretty orange and pink thermal cam ...

Watched the Discovery HD programme on the Eyjaf/Katla connection etc this evening and was very disappointed. There were a few good photographic bits that were endlessly and inappropriately repeated but no new material, no significant argument and plenty of poor, pseudo scientific writing. Lots of good alarmist talk though and introducing the new bogey - Kamchatka.
The advertisement breaks were good.

Well if that lightning is any indication, the ash cloud is quite high.

I am thankful that i live in a country where the last volcanic eruption was about 350 million years ago.

Frito, I second Gordys!

For Diane:

System for Ranking Relative Threats of U.S. Volcanoes. John Ewert. Natural Hazards Rev. Volume 8, Issue 4, pp. 112-124 (November 2007).

John works for the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory. The content of the above ACS journal article was also published as a USGS Open File Report:

OPEN-FILE REPORT 2005-1164
An Assessment of Volcanic Threat and Monitoring Capabilities in the United States:
Framework for a National Volcano Early Warning System
pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1164/2005-1164.pdf

Diane, you will want to view the ranking list at the end of this report in the Appendix section.

Long Lake is ranked in the Very High Probability category (along with Shasta and interestingly, Lassen), but I can't find mention of Mammoth Lake at all in the relative threat ranking.

@Zander #434 You're overdue! RUUUUNNNNN!!!!

I'm glad I was able to get out of the UK when I did back on May 11 (see the links to UK airports closing in #423).

A bit dark and probably cloudy out there, as I can see in the Thoro cam, but at least it'll get lighter in a just few hours, even though it's about 12:37 am in Reykjavik. Remember that most of Iceland isn't far south of the Arctic Circle and thus at 64Â°N, Reykjavik is not only Europe's northernmost capital, but also in the world! While sunrise may be just after 4:00 am (?)in Iceland at this time of year, the twilight periods up there can be very long, like a lot of northern places.

I hope it'll be less cloudy over the next couple of days. I don't know what the forecast holds for southern Iceland at the moment - haven't been on the computer much due to a nasty - and still ongoing - head cold and have only just gotten back on it.

Frito and Diane-I dont pot shot. I aim at targets.

"Only cultures seem to be what changes and that is a discussion for another blog or chat room ,not here. "

Sounds like deification to me and I dont recall seeing anyone snap up on that one. But thats just me.

I dont take crap off of anyone appointed or otherwise. She thought it was a political statement as so many do now days. It wasnt. It was a point in time comment and a change in policy that occurred, it did happen and I didnt vote for them either. The one thing that it did do was start increasing a population that wouldnt have otherwise. LIttle hard to accept I agree but as stated, if this gets out of control and it might if one or more of the others start going... You might have to fight those displaced for your right to be here. Nothing more, nothing less. EOT

@HRH Diane #435 (or is it "God" now? Hmmm ... always kinda figured God was a woman).

Anyhoo, thanks for seconding Gordys. :)

Did you noticed that absolutely beautiful blue cloud tops on the Thoros cam? It was spectacular!

"as a sidenote, can't we have a different large caldera system erupt in a movie?" Name one that's a bigger threat, Eric. (By "bigger" I mean a combination of probability and the size of the bang when it happens. I know it's not probable soon - but sometime in the next 40,000 to 70,000 years, a giant kaboom, and ash all over the continental US...)

Frito, I did see it earlier and it is gone now. :-( But it was beautiful. Ithink it was the light that came though the clouds on the glacier and reflected back into the clouds. I hope in a few hours we will be able to see something.

I think this is one of the most interesting things I have had the priviledge to be watching. I have passed some of the videos on to some friends of mine and they think they are just awesome. I wish I could have gone to Iceland. Seeing it from the cams and pics is good enough.

Diane, I'm glad you saw it too. What really struck me about it was how the blue tones matched the colour of the Mila logo to the left of it. Stunning. I was about to open my screen-capture software to grab it but ran out of RAM and had to reboot. Arggh.

I think I need a newer computer.

It's there again now!

http://eldgos.mila.is/english/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

Frito, I KNOW I need either a new computer or more RAM put into the one I have. LOL

Yes, it was a beautiful blue. Glaciers can look that way depending on the light.

I'm getting screen captures now. I just don't know what to do with them lol

@ 419/ MRK.

Nooo, the economy didn't tank under Carter. National debt, by Administration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms

See last column, increased Federal debt/GDP, by percentage points.

Neither Carter nor Clinton administrations were spendthifts, but Reagan, Bush I and Bush II sure were!

Carter's largest mistake was the Carter Doctrine (opened opportunity to later foreign policy unhappiness in the Middle East and elsewhere), not pushing alternative energy and population controls (with immigration overhauls) hard enough.

Had he done so, we would have had much smaller immigrant population (contrary to popular liberal belief, there is a threshold at which social program benefits are outweighed by administrative costs/inefficiencies/inequities...and contrary to popular conservative belief, cheap-ass foreign labor won't fix a deteriorating worker tax base), reduced dependency on foreign oil, an end to assinine Cold-War Industrial-Military *cash-sucking* Complex at bought us a plethora of small wars, and we would have far fewer gas hogging SUVs and Big Truks on the road, sure signs of conspicuous consumption in the face of declining natural resources and overt pollution.

We haven't heard the word 'zero population growth' since the Carter Administration, but we do have third world nations happily exporting illegals and alcohol- and drug-damaged kids from orphanages to anyone willing to take them...for a healthy fee. What a racket!

Why do people insist on bringing their political rants into a blog like this? Tangential conversation related to the ramifications of a volcano is one thing. But politics/social agendas don't belong here.

@Dan ~ I don't think it's "people". I think it's the same person posting under two or three nics. It's been happening off and on for a few weeks.

@Diane ~ I've got 6 pics so sometime tomorrow I'll open a picture-sharing account somewhere. I only wish I had been able to capture the original one that was more centered and defined.

PB-I wont censor you on this because it is a volcano blog. Not my job to do it anyway. But if you can fit something in there about a volcano, its effects or something like it I sure would appreciate it because as I said it was a point in time comment that was germane to the situation we are in. Volcanoes dont generally kill people, its after effects do.

And does anyone know what in hell is going on with that Infrared picture? Did I miss an eruption? Kind of like what Redoubt did when it popped. 7 degrees 1 minute and then boom, 7 miles away it was 80 degrees in just under 5. This was how it looked in Desert Storm after an air strike as the air slowly cooled down.

Thank you, Dan.

@Passerby, #436, thank you for the info. I will check into it. I did not know they had not mentioned Mammoth Mountain. Lassen and Shasta I can see them mentioning, but leaving out Mammoth Mt. and Long Valley is sort of odd to me given the very large swarm (we are talking about 2000+ quakes/week) at the resurgent dome in the mid '90s. I watched that one very carefully and the dome at that time was rising. Now, it is rather stable. Mammoth Mt. has been having small swarms that are mainly techtonic in nature because of the faults there. What is the main concern is the CO2 seepages, especially in the tree kill areas. The largest is at Horseshoe Lake. They do have warning signs there because of the amount of CO2. Long Valley is a very large caldera and has the Inyo craters in it and many large domes. The Bishop tuff has been found in Nebraska so it is capable of creating a pretty big blast.

At Lassen, there have been a number of small swarms at the south east base of the mountain and I know it will erupt again and it is a matter of time. Shasta, now that could do what Mazama did or Tehema. Both of those mountains were taller than Shasta.

Another area that isn't mentioned much, but that they are watching is Medicine Lake. I think it is in Modoc County, but I am not sure. It is the caldera that is likely responsible for the Lava Beds National Monument near Tulelake. I have been there and it is an interesting place with all kinds of lava caves and has the history of being the only Indian war in CA. Sixty Indians held off 600 cavalry for five months. One guy got shot twice and never saw an Indian! It is very much like Craters of the Moon in Idaho.

Thanks again for the info.

The doc that Passerby posted at #436 lists Mt Spurr (among others) in the highest threat category, which reminded me of the excellent searchable repository of high-res images that the AVO makes available for Alaska volcanoes. Some of these are stunning.

You can search by volcano or volcanic feature. I included a link to one of my favorite desktop images -- the Mt Spurr caldera lake. The link to the hi-res version appears after you click the thumbnail. Be sure to make note of copyright and attribution requirements.

www.avo.alaska.edu/images/index.php
www.avo.alaska.edu/image.php?id=9657 -- scroll for "full size" link

Lots of earthquakes after a calm week. Specially in Mid Atlantic Ridge.
MAP 5.3 2010/05/16 19:06:38 -34.540 -15.381 13.0 TRISTAN DA CUNHA REGION
MAP 5.2 2010/05/16 16:39:34 73.475 7.384 10.2 GREENLAND SEA
MAP 5.1 2010/05/16 15:29:03 73.387 7.249 10.0 GREENLAND SEA
MAP 5.3 2010/05/16 12:35:50 28.843 128.548 34.5 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN
MAP 5.4 2010/05/16 08:55:46 14.405 93.179 35.0 ANDAMAN ISLANDS, INDIA REGION
MAP 5.1 2010/05/16 05:30:58 -34.842 -16.062 10.0 SOUTHERN MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE
MAP 5.8 2010/05/16 05:16:11 18.400 -67.070 113.0 PUERTO RICO
MAP 5.3 2010/05/16 01:08:08 -51.866 28.253 10.0 SOUTH OF AFRICA
MAP 5.7 2010/05/16 00:33:08 0.443 124.607 141.1 MINAHASA, SULAWESI, INDONESIA

OK, MRK. The Carter administration saw a return to major eruption among it's volcanoes in the historic eruptions of Mt St Helens and Pagan. The pattern of increasing eruption activity would follow the resumption of climbing global temperatures, and an end to a odd and interesting pattern of tri-pole (rather than di-pole) solar cycle anomaly that may explain the unusual cooling trend between 1960-mid 1980s.

The decades that followed would show an interesting pattern of clustered eruptions in the Kamchatka and Kuriles and the Aleutian Chain, with peak year eruptions topping a 18 or more when both Russian and US volcanic arcs were in full voice.

There are notable groups of dense volcanoes located at higher latitudes that can wreck havoc with global economies: Iceland, Kamchatka/Kuriles, Japan, the Aleutians/Cook Inlet, New Zealand and the South American backbone.

The key word is *additive effects*, with 3 distinct applications of this term: additive over short intervals, additive over distance and additive when coupled to other emission sources.

Those who are suckered into believing that volcanic SO2 and ash will only cool climate need to read Peter Ward's papers.

@451/Diane: Medicine Lake is mentioned. Typically, Mammoth Lakes are considered apart from it's neighbor, the Long Lake Caldera system. In the case of the USGS doc, they maybe grouped, I haven't had time for a thorough read, but I had it in my references list and thought you might find it interesting wrt to the Long Lake, so I pulled it to post here and found an online source for those of you without U-library access.

An aside: I think we need an Eruptions volcano-of-the-month photo contest, useful for building a screen-saver image library - with proper source citation, as Carla thoughtfully notes.

Passerby, good that they mentioned Medicine Lake. Generally you don't hear about that one. Mammoth Mountain is on the rim of the Long Valley caldera. Its magam source may be different from the caldera itself. I haven't looking into it that much, but I know with some geologists, it is a concern. There is a fumerol that they take measurements from as well as the CO2 seepage areas. It is mostly quiet and not doing much more than it has been for quite a while. They are still trying to keep people out of Hot Creek because even though the water is nice and warm, it can get boiling hot in a matter of seconds so they have closed off part of it. Not a good place to be.

I like your idea of a photo of the month. I miss the quess this volcano pics, but I think we are running out of those. :-) Besides that, we have some really smart people here who know their volcanoes!

PB-Is there anything else you want to add?

I wouldnt want to slow you down when you are on a roll like this. Please...Do continue and along the way let us know your curriculum vitae, molecular weight at birth and anything else you have to bring up. What did you have for lunch?

And as for Peter W.'s papers, I have read them. They are nice and very well organized.

Thank you.

Passerby, great idea! This is actually one of my life passions (collecting volcano-related photos) and I have a lot of image links to contribute. I'll start working on a page of links to best-of type images from public repositories I have visited. Lava lakes, anyone?

I just finished watching an episode of CBC's 'The Passionate Eye' entitled 'The Volcano that Stopped the World.'

Unfortunately, it looks like this isn't available for watching online yet. There was some cool footage of shockwaves coming up through the plume and the videographer even managed to catch a shot of one of the smoke rings.

Interesting 'beginner level' (suitable for me) Icelandic volcano documentary :)

Methinks one or two members here could benefit from a quick read of another Scienceblog entitled "The Evolution of Asshatitude on the Internet".

Quoted from the article: "It's true that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog; but everybody knows you're an asshat [...] blogospheric identities can be long-lived, and quasi-stable "communities" can arise [...] regular commenters develop reputations. Those who consistently make informed, logical, on-topic arguments are recognized with deference, while asshats are quickly marked and treated as such. I'm puzzled by the asshats that keep hanging around, because it's not easy to see how they benefit from their consistent asshatitude."

And on that note, I'm off to watch a volcano for a couple of minutes before bed :)

Thanks for your opinion BeeDragon. It will be filed with the other sanctimony I have come to enjoy from many in their attempts to pontificate in blogheaven.

Would anyone else like to comment or can we get back to the little mountain that is? Frankly continuing this is boorish and detracts from real information. But I am game for just about anything.

If you could revert to useful meteorology and ash plume trajectory commentary, we can improve the signal-to-noise ratio posts and dispense with the sarcasm and backbiting that tend to dull a gem of a blog like Eruptions.

@Boris Behncke (#365)(#353), "What intrigues me is what you don't say."

It was not my intent to emphasize Armageddon scale scenarios when I made mention of unspoken intrigue. Explanations which you have already provided for those infrequent eventualities are clear and compelling.

I had hoped that you would comment on the unexpected 'stuff happens' predicament. There are many volcanoes and not much recorded history other than the partially explored geological record. There is ample opportunity for unexpected and unanticipated behavior to occur, be it good, bad, sideways or utterly baffling.

An encouraging trend in science is the blossoming discovery of strange, wonderful, unexpected and unimagined objects and phenomena. Isn't volcanology full of those jaw dropping, unanticipated surprises as well? Unconsidered outcomes are weird, unusual, inconvenient, painful and perhaps even welcome. The whole thing being that they are often unconsidered and/or implausible until they are already upon us.

Armageddon is overplayed. Life has survived many Armageddons in the past and will undoubtedly triumph over more in the future before the final corker does us all in.

When NASA isn't preoccupied with lecturing congress on the foregone conclusions associated with the 'settled science' of AGW, it's busy fawning over how incredibly remarkable and very, very unexpected science of the non-AGW universe is turning out to be!

Your well reasoned and expressed non-alarmist stance is magnificent. You are keenly aware of the problems that come with being too alarmist, too reassuring and too overbearing with confidence as to the certainty of your science. You might also be aware that unanticipated and unexpected 'stuff happens' and that it undoes reasoned expectations.

Now speak if can of those possibilities that you don't mention and may not yet have even imagined. Given the small space of known behavior, the intrigue is fascinating and plausible. I accept that you might have no response. I am asking you the most difficult question possible. I am asking about the things that you leave out, the things that you don't know and haven't considered. It isn't your style.

Then again, given your insistence on weighing the full broad space of possibilities, speculation with regard to what is previously unconsidered might be very much to your fancy.

I accept Armageddon is unlikely regardless. There is a universe of possibility that is not Armageddon. :-)

Met Ash Update

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/europe/volcano/volcano_blog.html

It apparently is still powerful even if we can't see it.

Sad, very sad! Politics and other chaty stuff just kills the interesting discussions about Eyja. I am still grateful though no cooking recipee was posted YET!

This article predicting decades of ash from various Iceland volcanoes - does it accurately portray scientists concerns?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7127706.ece

Helicorders are very quiet today, and the wind is calm compared to yesterday.
www.heklubyggd.is/vedur.htm

@Jack #441, there are a number of caldera volcanoes that are far more dangerous than Yellowstone, both because they're more likely to erupt and because they're much more densely populated. I guess on top of all is Campi Flegrei here in Italy, which has a part of Naples in it. If it were to erupt on a big scale it would directly threaten the lives of several million people, it would wipe out one of the most densely regions of Europe and the Mediterranean, tsunamis (caused by pyroclastic flows entering the nearby ocean) would menace the coasts of much of southern Italy, Corsica and possibly beyond, and the ash fallout would cause darkness all over the eastern Mediterranean to the Middle East.

Though I do not think this will happen soon, and most likely it will be preceded by a long series of warning signs, allowing at least to try to evacuate those several million people at risk.

@Raving #463, the element of surprise and the things unknown are a constant companion of our work, also at Etna, the volcano that I am principally working on. One would believe that Etna, with a record of documented eruptions going back more than 2000 years, and monitored with one of the most sophisticated monitoring systems that there is on any volcano on this planet, should be pretty well understood and "under control". To some degree it is. But each time it comes back to life, it does something that was not expected. And go figure, if you were to ask me in this very moment when Etna is going to erupt next, I'd be able to say "soon, probably in a few weeks to months", but that's what we say already since a couple of weeks to months, and the volcano has not given us any further signs. We don't know when, we don't know how, and we don't know where (at the summit? on the flank? Which flank?) it will erupt next time.

I noted that in an earlier contribution, we cannot say more than the volcano allows us to say. Sometimes this is a lot, sometimes it's very little, and in many cases it's not very precise. It's like trying to forecast when you'll have your next cold. Not until the moment you start feeling some itching in your nose and start sneezing, you can start saying something relevant. Only that by this time, the cold is already very much there.

But of course, you can do things before the cold is there, you can have plans on how to behave and have some medicine at home in order to react immediately and render the whole affair as undramatic as possible. That's what we call prevention, and that is meant to be somehow ready in whatever case and to be able to react adequately even to surprising events. Only that prevention is not given the priority it deserves. That's why we have disasters like in Haiti, not because it was all that surprising, it was just because nobody gave a **** although the threat was known and communicated.

@Jacko (#441) Yellowstone certainly is a large volcanic system, but nowhere near every eruption is a "VEI 8 Island Park" eruption. If you want a bigger eruption, La Garita and the Fish Canyon Tuff is a good start. If you want eruptions that imperil a large number of people, Toba is a greater threat. A far, far, far, far greater threat if you take into account the number of people living where Toba-deposits have been found. If you want one as likely or as "imminent", why not look up the bradyseismicity of Campi Flegrei or have a gander at Lake Taupo. Or why not one of the little known restless calderas in South America?

Since these very large events are global, there is no need for American parochialism. We will all feel the effects of one. Should it indeed be Yellowstone, you may find that the consequences of living in Wyoming are far more preferable than the fate that awaits humanity elsewhere. Instant death to me anyway seems far more preferable than the many varied forms of demise open to those who have to try and survive the global consequences.

@Thomas #466: That's the first I've heard of that. However, it is unusual to make such a claim unless you also have a reasonable mechanism to propose - otherwise people tend to ignore you (or even laugh at you - it's very bad news for you if people laugh at you at a conference). This looks like a case which I will ignore; I would not even believe the claim of some sort of cycle without having seen the data myself and looked at how the data was gathered, what was rejected, etc. The article certainly doesn't provide the least bit of useful information to the reader. So for now I suspect the story is just to attract an audience like the "Katla will erupt next" stories (and the article even includes several Katla scare stories).

I could listen to the sound of Eyja all day - this recent video is fab, and has sound, too... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ydnLkVvfZM&feature=player_embedded

So is anything actually happening with our volcanic friend Eyja, no posts with much observation since around the 15th May. Someone normally has something to say about how she's been overnight and during the day, but there is nothing. In the "general" posts now coming up I fear poor Eyja is not doing enough worthy of mention and has been forgotten. (how do you do a teardrop on a computer)!!!

@Dee #472 Poor Eyja forgotten? Not here in Holland:
The Netherlands has joined the list of countries closing airports.
Schiphol Amsterdam and Rotterdam airports will be closed from 6am (2pm AEST) to 2pm today.

@MadScientist (#470); Thomas (#466) - we've already had a few words on that article in The Times (see posts #303 and following, in particular #325) ... but to synthesize here, it's certainly very much the same old story, of single phrases said by scientists being cited in order to have them appear in a determined manner. I am quite unconvinced about the regular cyclicity - that there are cycles, is something we also say here at Etna, but these cycles are highly irregular. They show repeated patterns, but in different time frames. That there will be ash-producing eruptions in Iceland in the future is not really new, it's like saying "you will have the flu sooner or later during the next few years". Ah, really? Thanks so much.

Describing the late-20th century as a period of low levels of volcanic activity in Iceland is straightforward wrong, so I dare cite myself (comment #325): "the period from 1961 until at least 1984 was one of unusually intense activity with 16 eruptive events, including the 1961 Askja, 1963-1967 Surtsey, and 1973 Heimaey eruptions. In this period were the years 1980-1981, with two eruptive events at Hekla and five at Krafla. Low activity?"

Katla will erupt one day (Ah, really?) but it doesn't seem to be happening now. And once it will happen, there's absolutely no guarantee that it will be a tremendous, world-shaking event. So I see little use about resurrecting this story over and over again - maybe only to keep the subject in public conscience, because it is true: there will not be "decades of ash falls" but there will be again ash falls sometime during the next few decades, and the problem will present itself again.

#dee, #472. Not much to say about Eyja because there's zero visibility and the eruption seems to have taken on a stable pace, for the moment.

@Leo#473. Sorry Leo, regrettably she is being remembered there for the chaos she's causing with flights rather than the humbling nature of the eruption and beauty of a mountain with a very severe case of indigestion.

@Boris #474. Thank you for that Boris. Much appreciated.

is this the big 1? or that 1 or the 1 over there?
Harmageddon (a place in middle east actually) will happen at sometime,if not by a volcano,then countless other causes.
Debateing if it will or wont is futile,as is debateing if this is it.What will it achieve? could we ever prevent it?
All the talking,ranting and raveing will accomplish nothing.

Governments have been aware of possibility of the human species demise for some time,and preperations have been made to hopefully ensure humanitys (species) continuation.
Although all or any of them are not a guarantte,there is no such thing as a guarantee.

Maybe for some saying this is end of world gives them a rush,while it will cause some to feel dispair & even commit suicide,and then it may not even happen within their or their great grand childrens lives.

If you walked across the road and got run over & killed by a truck(e.g) it would be the end of the world,for you.

there cannot be live without death,all are transidient.
Just live & enjoy the ride and not worry about what may be in the future;causing anxieties for yourself & others today.
The future will emerge its own anxieties,and proberbly not the ones you envision.

*steps off soap box*

Reports that flights from RAF Lossiemouth grounded after a Tornado GR4 suffered engine damage following low level flight "below ash cloud" last week

Yes of course the goverments of the world have everthing under control ... dont worry ... they have everything under control ... you can see it in the news.

okay this looks stranger that it should sound.
What i mean, i hate statements where someone says just life your life do nothing, i think its time to step up and it will happen in the next 2 years. Too much changed, the finacial crisies is BIG! And it will stop working, just my hopes.

Everybody knows it, everybody is thinking about how bad the world has become! But yeah the others will step up for it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement…

ohh thats also good hadnt seen that before,

http://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_youth_in_search_of_meaning.html

im out

Goodmorning all! 4 new EQ, one deep, 26,2 http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Good morning everyone. I've looked at the web cams and not much to see again I am going to have withdrawal symptoms soon lol. Last night I noticed the stones at bottom of Thoro cam were covered in ash but this morning they seem to have a thick layer on them also the Flir cam is just orange no purple or dark blues, no longer my lovely psychedelic cam:)

I'm interested by the location of certain earthquakes. Some, including a few of the new ones, appear to occur always about in the same place about, 5 Km South of Tindfjallajokull. I wonder what's happening below there.

@Jessica #465 - No recipes yet? Hmmmm. Here's the closest I could get:

The Volcano Kettle(TM) http://www.kellykettle.com/vmchk/Kelly-Kettles.html?TreeId=1

And if that's not obtuse enough, how about some volcano-related sewing: LAVA PILLOWS

http://geology.about.com/library/bl/images/bllavapillow.htm

:-)

Monday
17.05.201008:32:1963.626-19.0419.5 km-0.237.785.9 km NNE of HÃ¡bunga

Now after the hekla eq a tiny one on katla http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

There is a sudden increase in harmonic tremors coming from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. I don't know why that is, but I am assuming that the eruption is now increasing in strength at the moment.

The earthquake in Katla (MÃ½rdalsjÃ¶kull) is a poor quality, so take that location with a doubt.

@JÃ³n FrÃmann

Wow, you are right! http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

@489: be warned though that those sudden spikes often get toned down as the next minutes of seismicity get counted into average.

Morning!
RÃV cams are back (Katla and Hekla). Not much to be seen, though, because of visibility.
http://www.ruv.is/hekla/
http://www.ruv.is/katla/

The EQÂ´s at IMO website are not verified (to 100%) so I would not be surprised if the location changes to the EF caldera.

@Dagmar #489: also, it's always good to see the latest changes in tremor levels in the context of the whole eruption (I mean, the summit eruption that started 13-14 April):
hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html
so what we see now is really really really tiny in comparison to what happened in early May. And even when the tremor levels were really high, the eruption did not seem to be at its strongest.

@Dennis #480 "how bad the world has become" - I fear it's always been bad, sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less; I honestly wouldn't want to live in any period other than the present. But what is true is that we're all walking on thin ice for one reason or another. We're certainly living far beyond our resources and assuming everything's gonna be alright, because electricity comes out of the socket and so on. Here in Sicily people continue to build spectacular villas for themselves and to buy big SUV's and 60 in television screens, although Sicily is one of the poorest regions of Italy (it's all on credit). Amazingly still many Italians believe it when our beloved Cavaliere Berlusconi says that everything is fine here in this country and will vote for him next time.

The one thing that gives me hope (and I do need hope for my little daughter who is now nearly 5 years old) is that during all generations of the human society, there have been fears that something REALLY BAD would happen, about the end of the world, and sometimes pretty tough s**t has been going down (I would for nothing in the world have wanted to live in Germany between 1933 and 1945, for example). But here we are, and those of us who are here on this blog are probably benefitting from the highest living standards our respective societies have enjoyed thus far - which obviously also makes us all much more vulnerable. A simple stupid blackout would cut us off from looking at the Eyja webcams (luckily I have a real, and very beautiful volcano to look at in my backyard, and a few more of us have)...

@Boris: Thanks; I thought that would probably be the case (storyteller taking scientists out of context). That's why I don't talk to journalists I don't know; many think they're being clever by having a story in mind then talking to people and quoting them to support their preconceived story. One big non-story at the moment is yet another study concluding that there is no link between brain cancer and mobile phones - a very straightforward conclusion. The way the story runs is "mobile phones proven to cause brain cancer" and in the article "scientists will not rule out mobile phones as a cause of brain cancer" - so these pretend journalists are quite happy to state the exact opposite of what scientists say just to make a story.

@Dubliner #485: Hah. I got very very hot feet while in Papua New Guinea; I didn't realize that there were very hot fumaroles in the shallow water and I tried to walk across. The natives were laughing at me; they told me they actually cook things in the sand cones that form around the fumaroles. I asked them if they were hoping I would cook myself for dinner - but they all deny being cannibals "that's another tribe" they said (but every tribe seems to say it's another tribe).

Ok i retract my previous post (#492) since they seem to be 99% verified by now.

But the two new oneÂ´s have a magnitude of 0.0 (90% ver.) and the last one at -0.2 magnitude. Although the last one is not verified but how can it be a negatvie number?

#493 @Boris: To paraphrase Dickens: These are the best of time, these are the worst of times. All we can do is put up with it... and optimise our time.

Why, whenever I hear Sr. Berlusconi mentioned, do I always think of the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Wallace"?

Says the IceMetOffice: Ashfall expected N and NW of the eruption today and tomorrow.

Tell me does Iceland make all its own fog and clouds or import them from another country? LOL

good morning - scientists, I have an access question for you...there have ben several posts to articles coming from Science Direct and similar sources(I run into J-stor a lot on Google searches) which evidently require approved credentials of some sort, presumably professional or academic. Is there any way for us less connected earthlings to have access to academic resources short of shelling out cash? Used to be you could goto a library and find things....

Send me your Mount St. Helens memories

eklemetti — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:18:38 +0000

Send me your Mount St. Helens memories

Mount St. Helens erupting in 1980.

Just a reminder ... please send them to me by May 15 so I can get them all ready for the post on the 18th!

As many of you might (or might not) now, we're heading towards the 30th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Now, I could fill a book with the information out there on the volcano and the eruption, but instead, I think it would be more interesting to get your takes on the eruption. I have to admit, I was all of three when the eruption occurred, so my memories of the event are hazy at best, but if you have any memories, reactions or thoughts you want to share on the events leading up to the eruption, the eruption itself and the aftermath, please email them to me at .

I will compile them for a post commemorating the May 18, 1980 eruption.

eklemetti Thu, 05/13/2010 - 12:18

Tags

I was 20 years old when St. Helens "blew her top". What I remember about that day is that my brother and I left Beaverton, Oregon that morning and were traveling Westbound on US 26 headed toward the beach for the day. We were riding my brother's Yamaha XS 850 Full Dress motorcycle and I was the passenger so I was "rubber-necking" the scenery everywhere we went. We were just North of Hillsboro when I happened to look toward the hills to the North of us and noticed a huge cloud of "smoke" rising over the top of the hills.

I got my brother's attention and told him to stop so that we could both check it out safely. He stopped and we both watched as the cloud got bigger and higher and we very quickly realized we were watching something of "mind-boggling" proportions. Cars were stopping also and many people watched it.

We decided to go ahead and complete our trip to the beach. When we reached the beach near Seaside were able to find out exactly what was happening and it completely blew our minds. We had never imagined that such a thing was even possible.

In the days and weeks to come we found out what it was like to have volcanic ash make your life miserable. The ash was extremely abrasive and it damaged the paint finish on every car our family owned. It also plugged the air filters of our engines and got into EVERYTHING! Your cloths, your cars interior, your homes, your ears, and it was murder on your eyes! BRUTAL!

Of course with time the mountain settled down and things got back to normal but it was an experience I will never forget - well at least until Alzheimers sets in.

BTW: I have been lurking on this blog since March and it is my second favorite blog - my first favorite is an NBA blog www.blazersedge.com the ultimate blog for Portland TrailBlazer Fans!

I was attending UBC - B.Sc. Geology - and was working on a forest fire in the southern Interior of British Columbia about 30 miles north of Revelstoke. Suddenly there was an explosion that sounded like dynamite and a pressure wave that you could feel. Everyone dropped their tools and walked out to the road to see what was going on.

All around us the landscape was silent - nothing could account for the sound and pressure wave. Later in the day as we drove home a strange fog like haze appeared and when I arrived home I heard the news that explained the days phenomena.

Whaaa? Goo-goo?

...I was only a few months old...

We were about 200 miles to the north of the volcano. The shock wave rattled the house, shook items down on to the floor. The first thought, hearing the deep boom, was that an atomic bomb had gone off. It took an hour or more to figure out that it was the volcano, and then the fine ash started..a thin layer, but you could feel it on everything.

I was living in Tennessee, a twenty-something attending classes as a chemistry and math major undergraduate.

Mt St Helen's ash had given the Deep South a cooler than normal summer and fall in 1981.

The ash cloud left it's calling card in a most unusual winter that year. Come January 1982, the Tennessee Valley and much of the Deep South would feel the impact of the worst ice storm in many decades, accompanied by near record frigid temperatures and in some areas, snow as well. The accumulated 5 inches of ice insulated by snow, would persist to paralyze our area for nearly a month from a deceptive storm that hit January 19th, a day that had been forecast for warm conditions (50 degrees) and gentle rain.

Since this storm crept in unannounced, the local grocery stores were not immediately stripped bare of necessitities, as was usually the case when inclement weather struck.

It was a memorable winter, one of two unusually cold seasons to occur in just a few years, thanks to Mt St Helens and later, El Chichon.

One of the most impressive sights I remember was the Palouse
prairie of Eastern Washington looking like the surface of the
Moon (hmmm.) One of my clients was a rancher who said "All in all this is good for the land,it's the reason this country is so fertile.-just add water."
Just as a little OT "Palouse" is a Nez Peirce Word. They bred the spotted horses "Appaloosa" which actually derives from the term "It's a Paluose".here is a bit on that region of the US: http://www.palouseprairie.org/display/

I was eleven when the volcano erupted. In Britain, where I am from, there is a children's news program on the BBC called Newsround. They had the most fantastic footage of the bulge, the landslide and the eruption afterwards. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen. I remember that the ash even made it as far as England even though it was a fine dusting, when it rained you could see it on all the cars. A couple of years later, we studied volcanoes and earthquakes at school in geography. We went and watched the footage of the volcano again and were told to do a project on it. As you can imagine, I got an A for my assignment and have wanted to be a volcanologist ever since. In July 2009 with my family and nine year old daughter who is also a volcano fanatic, we spent our vacation in WA and the very first day we had to go to the volcano and the observatory. It was a 29 year dream come true for me and a two year dream for my daughter. I hope they do something special to remember the 30th anniversary. I need to go back. I am not a volcanologist however, something I would still like to be.

I had to comment on this post. I don't remember the eruption of May 18, 1980 but for a good reason. I was born on that fateful day, thirty years ago today. I was born in Ashland, Oregon. My mother told me once she remembers watching ash falling to the ground that afternoon after I was born. I've always found volcanoes fascinating. I wonder why! ;-)

i have a newspaper that is a special collectors issue of the eruption of mt st helens printed in 1980and was wondering if you would know the value of this old newspaper
would be

Permanently earthy and considering course

hile I found this page really intriguing, I could not help but to contemplate whether the figures you used are accurate. That statement looks fairly weird to me. Any thoughts whether itâs genuinely true?

cqcqwcqwcwqcqwcqwcwc

Allezeit erscheinen nagelneue Telefone auf den Gebiet. Aber wie erfolgreich sind diese ?

Kontant gelangen neue Mobile auf den Gebiet. Aber wie ordentlich sind diese ?

Thank you for making the honest try to provide an explanation for this. I think very robust about it and want to learn more. If it's OK, as you reach more in depth wisdom, could you mind including extra posts similar to this one with more information? It might be extremely helpful and useful for me and my colleagues.

Review: NOVA's "Mt. Saint Helens: Back from the Dead"

eklemetti — Mon, 03 May 2010 08:47:52 +0000

Review: NOVA's "Mt. Saint Helens: Back from the Dead"

Mt. Saint Helens erupting in 2004.

I had a chance to watch a new NOVA special that airs May 5 (PBS) on the 1980-1986 and 2004-2008 eruption cycles at Mt. Saint Helens, along with the recovery of the blast zone from the 1980 eruption. It is a fitting episode as we approach the 30th anniversary of the eruption that took out the north side of the volcano and devastated a vast swath of Cascade wilderness in Washington on May 18, 1980. Many of you have already sent me your Mt. Saint Helens memories (keep them coming!) for my tribute to the eruption, but if you want to get started on remembering that historic event and looking how the ecosystem and volcano has changed since then, this is a good place to start.

NOVA: Mount Saint Helens - Back from the Dead
Watch the preview.

Now, first, the plus side: A great deal of the footage in this episode is absolutely stunning - it is either new footage of the volcano or what looks like remastered footage of the eruptions of the 1980s. I was definitely transfixed by the shots of the eruption and the devastated area after the 1980 eruption. It was especially fun to hear from John Pallister and Dan Dzurisin (USGS) about their thoughts from both the 1980s and 2000s eruptions. I did appreciate the fact that the episode showed that a lot of geologic research involves looking at the rocks in detail to understand how they formed - when Pallister discusses the gas content of the magma, it is done in a very realistic and reasonable fashion (i.e., none of this "shocking discovery" nonsense that plagues many documentaries lately). The ecological side of the story was interesting, albeit a little fluffy. Again, the footage of Spirit Lake was great and the discussion of how rapidly it recovered was something I had not heard before this episode. Even the discussion of when St. Helens might erupt again was mostly done in a responsible fashion - I was worried at first when they quoted Pallister saying that large explosive eruptions (~10x the 1980 eruption) occur "on the order of 1000 years" and then tried to link it to the idea that St. Helens was "due" for such an event. However, they turned it back around to mention the twin, large explosive events in 1479 and 1482 AD that Pallister said shows how the volcano can produce large events only years apart - putting to rest any idea that a "recurrence interval" for large eruptions has meaning.

Now, the down side: Maybe this is more a criticism of nature documentaries on the whole today, but I am still annoyed by the "Discovery Channelization" of these shows. The quick cuts, the overbearing obsession with destruction (the "gloom-and-doom") and the insistence on inserting unnecessary computer animations just distracts from the really interesting story about the volcano. There is an overemphasis of Saint Helens as being a "threat" (usually accompanied by ominous drumbeats) to mankind, calling it a "ticking timebomb" - just unnecessary in my opinion. My gold standard for volcano documetaries is still "In the Path of a Killer Volcano" on Mt. Pinatubo, which might have been made long enough ago to compare, in that that documentary, they let the geologist and Air Force personnel ramp up the excitement rather than artificially augmenting it with MTV-style production and 2012-like doomsday prognostication.

Some of the science in the episode was played a little loose for my liking as well - much of the events leading up to the 1980 and 2004 eruptions were glossed over in such a way as to suggest they came out of the blue (especially in regard to the 1980 event). Some of the connections that were implied, such as the length of time to build up gas pressure is directly related to an eruption and that only explosive events are "eruption" were a little glaring. Also, the explanation and graphic for subduction-zone magmatism was, well, appalling. Sorry to say it, but it might have been the worst I've seen in a long time - implying some huge, bubbling vat of liquid as thick as the crust underneath the Cascades, with a conveyor belt of magma coming from what I think was supposed to be the Juan de Fuca plate ... but you got me. Luckily, it was only briefly used in the episode. The same might be said for the graphic on the "Ring of Fire", which implied that the entire Hawaii-Emperor Seamount Chain is active, but again, it was only briefly used.

Overall: All that being said, I actually enjoyed the episode - one of the first to connect the 1980 eruption, the post-1980 recovery and the 2004-08 activity into a single thread about the active volcano. It definitely gives viewers the impression that events like the 1980 eruption are not "out of the ordinary" at a volcano like Mt. Saint Helens, but instead that we should expect that volcanoes will have violent eruption - and life will recover, likely faster than we could imagine. It really is the footage of Saint Helens that is the star of the episode, letting people see how much the volcano has changed since the 1980 eruption, up close and personal.

Grade: B (Well worth watching, but watch out for some of the tone and loose science).

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of the video to watch from WGBH.

eklemetti Mon, 05/03/2010 - 04:47

Tags

volcanoes in the media

volcanoes in the media

wildlife

I agree that the Pinatubo video is the gold standard. Even though it is getting a little long in the tooth I still show it in introductory courses. I also showed a more recent NOVA special on Nyiragongo and was disappointed. Although the images were spectacular and the science content was OK, the whole was weakened by melodramatic music and doom and gloom narration.

IMHO I think this trend is dictated by the audience the specials are aimed at. From my own exposure it seems that suburban middle-class Westerners (not just Americans!) are so cocooned and comfortable that they have not experienced and learned to deal with threats. So the reaction is either denial or hyperbolic doom-mongering. The powers that be come from that environment (yes, even at PBS), so they assume that over-the-top doom mongering is necessary in order to get any one to watch.

I agree with everything you say about the Discovery Channel and others. Volcanoes aren't my field but when programmes are about subjects I do know, many are unwatchable. The problem is that they all seem to have a ceiling of knowledge which prevents any in-depth analysis. I am reminded of a Simpsons episode where Lisa was criticised for watching The Learning Channel when she was ill in bed. "I'm really not learning very much," was her excuse. Many, many thanks for this superb blog.

To Erik and EKoh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDv_c14fGqI

You can find parts 2 and 3 as well on youtube, although these parts put together only form the second half of the documentary. I'm glad to have it on dvd myself. As young as I was at the time of the Pinatubo eruption, I can still remember seeing live coverage in the news. 'In the path of a killer volcano' was on Dutch national television about two years after and I was addicted to watching it over and over again. Nowadays I show it to some of the classes I teach to give them an idea of what a big explosive eruption is and to give them a little bit of a comparison to what Laacher See in the Eifel did around 13.000 years ago.

Talking about documentaries that could have been done better: I'm currently in Edinburgh, Scotland and there are several British tv channels showing stuff on the EyjafjallajÃ¶kull eruption. The cr@p I hear about Katla... -_-'

The initial shot of the explosion in the preview video looks suspiciously like it was CGI-enhanced to me. Am I wrong? And the immediately following shots of smoke billowing through the trees is surely special effects of some kind, no?

Yeah, Discovery really NEEDED to CGI the eruption of St. Helens. Cuz, like, it wasn't spectacular enough on its own. *rolls eyeballs* And of course, in addition to attempting to turn it into an SFX extravaganza, these TV docu-makers also feel the need to give it a theatrical movie-trailer soundtrack, with over-the-top, deafening percussion and menacingly melodramatic orchestrations. If I wanted to see a Michael Bay film, I'd go to the movies or rent a DVD.

This is part of a deeper trend in society where reality is tailored to resemble a movie and our lives to mimic those of the stars. We live an illusion my friends as reality is not as appealing. Thus, the great mass of viewers for whose time companies pay networks will not watch if reality is not as dramatic as a Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg film.

Yeah, Discovery really NEEDED to CGI the eruption of St. Helens. Cuz, like, it wasn't spectacular enough on its own. *rolls eyeballs*

Not sure if you're rolling those eyeballs at my comment, or at the Discovery Channel. If the former, I just looked at the original footage again, and it looks different to me from that in the preview--not much in the way of streamers, just great billows of smoke. But it sure is spectacular.

Not sure if you're rolling those eyeballs at my comment, or at the Discovery Channel.

Definitely was rolling my eyes at Discovery--and at all the docu channels these days. For instance, I can't stand watching Nat'l Geo documentaries any more because their soundtracks have such over-augmented percussive noise.

If I wanted to listen to constant ear-splitting cymbals crashing, gongs exploding and bass drums thumping......I'd go to an orchestral concert. Or yes, another Michael Bay film. ;-)

Let's not be too harsh on the TV people. Your blog is obviously much more factual than the TV show -- but how large of an audience does it attract? There's a trade-off between correctness and digestibility. Even your own representations fall short of the pure truth, but the pure truth is infinite in magnitude. We all scale down the complexity of truth to achieve comprehensibility. The only difference between this blog and the TV show is the position of the trade-off line.

If the portentous doom-&-gloom commentary and extraneous music annoy you, just turn down the sound and enjoy the images. You probably know enough to enjoy the visual reinforcement of what you've read.

I listened to the audio podcast Nova: Science Now plugging this episode of Nova... They seem to be misinformed as to which state the volcano in question resides.

Two New USGS Mt. St. Helens Short Movies on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec30uU0G56U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC9JnuDuBsU

Good blog

I was hired to shoot the geological additions to this film in order for NOVA to flesh out the important geological aspects to the the story. The 2004 eruption with the lava forcing its way out in the form of giant towers was amazing. The guys who jump out of helicopters to grab samples while this is happening are crazy but they do love their volcanoes.

"I was questioning should you will be thinking about turning into a visitor poster on my weblog? and in exchange you might set a hyperlink the submit? Please let me know when you get a probability and I'll deliver you my contact particulars - thanks. Anyway, in my language, you can find not considerably excellent supply similar to this."

Send me your Mt. Saint Helens Memories

eklemetti — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 09:01:19 +0000

Send me your Mt. Saint Helens Memories

Mt. Saint Helens erupting in 1980.

As many of you might (or might not) now, we're heading towards the 30th anniversary of the dramatic eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in Washington state. Now, I could fill a book with the information out there on the volcano and the eruption, but instead, I think it would be more interesting to get your takes on the eruption. I have to admit, I was all of three when the eruption occurred, so my memories of the event are hazy at best, but if you have any memories, reactions or thoughts you want to share on the events leading up to the eruption, the eruption itself and the aftermath, please email them to me at .

I will compile them for a post commemorating the May 18, 1980 eruption.

eklemetti Fri, 04/30/2010 - 05:01

Tags

You were 3?
i have children older than You.
Best!motsfo

I lived in Washington state north of Seattle near a town called Mt Vernon. As a hiker I had often been in the area of St Helens and camped. Prior to the main eruption the mountain had 'warmed up' for a time. I have some photos of this while the mountain was spewing but still mostly intact.

Sunday morning at about 9 AM a knock on my door and my neighbor exclaiming "DId you Hear IT? St Helens blew up!" After watching the TV I discovered I had missed the photos and sight of my life in not continuing my trip. The day had dawned remarkably clear at that too,

Cheers,

Correction to your post--the eruption was on May 18, 1980, not May 17.

John - Thanks for catching that! My mistake ... and it is fixed.

i was living on acreage in the lower mainland of B.C. (Maple Ridge) I was woken up by the sound which was apparently refracted by an atmospheric inversion from St. Helens to B.C. . I was reading somewhere that the sound was the noise of the crypto-dome hitting Spirit Lake . Several of my working buddies also heard it .. I thought somebody was blasting stumps not too far away

I was living in the Richland Wa. Area at the time,we didn't get hit much by the ashcloud, but it looked like the scene out of De Mille's "Ten Commandments". I had just flew a USGS Mission from Longview Wa. the day previous. and was not liking what the Goat Rocks looked like.-Obvious Deformation.

I was at a boy scout camp somewhere east of Yakima. We heard 'thunder' that morning, and the scoutmasters started rounding people up to leave camp (I believe we were meant to leave that day anyway). As we were milling around the buses getting ready to leave, ash started coming down. I remember being fascinated and holding out my hand to let it catch the ash. The scoutmaster with us insisted that it was just 'snow'. I think that I questioned this, and he insisted that it was 'snow' and that we needed to get on the bus. I realize now that he was just losing his shit, and was panicking and trying to get his scouts on the bus. But at the time, I don't think i'd ever heard such a blatant contrary to obvious fact lie in my life, that wasn't some kind of joke. I was actually furious most of the way home and I quit the scouts the next week, (something that had probably been building anyway, as I also quit the church at about the same time). I absolutely cannot stand being lied to, for any reason, which makes science a decent fit for me, but makes reading the news an ordeal.

My folks were living in Bellevue, WA., Dad teaching at UW. My mother said that she was idly swimming in the lake and realized suddenly what she was seeing to the south...beat all records in getting back to the house. A friend was some long time later at work in the Palouse and was affected by the ash.

I was between assignments in the military and here in Memphis at home during the January following this. It was COLD and we had taken hits from snowstorm after snowstorm.

There is a place in East Memphis called Germantown...Beverly Hills East if you will and there were hundreds of abandoned cars on the three main veins that went east. Porches, Mercedes, BMW's and naturally ordinary Chevy's and Fords. So they gave them til six to get them off the roads...They didnt cause they were buried in snow and ice. Yep a foot of packed snow into ice at that.

WHAAAAAAAAM ! He got the first one and he hit it amidships like a torpedo and man I never knew a Volvo could take so much. Moderate damage and it slid up to the curb and then over it onto the sidewalk. Instantly there was an audience. Kid lines up on a Porche next and it it in the tail and it did about 4 spins and it too was up on the curb much worse the wear. I bet it was 20,000 for starts to fix that. Onward he pummelled into the night, taking no heed but for one thing and that was to clear the road. I moved out onto the sidewalk and stopped at the liquor store as he progressed because this was too much fun to watch. I had to follow him. So for about every 5th car, I took a shot of vodka and along about car 25 or 30 I was smashed. But I stayed with him. By now he was at the Holiday Inn and a lot of the people from the freeway and G'town had not gotten the word and they were the ones who had lots of cars out there. I saw one guy with a load of groceries turn purple as he realized what was about to happen to his car but ...errrrrnrnnngngggghhhhh toooooo late bubba. There goes a Chevy 2500 4 speed dual wheel truck. History....Radiator, front end, both front panels. Gone.... Within minutes this was on the news and of course the helicopters were up sending pictures.... It wasnt but another 30 minutes before the kid had received all the fun and recognition he was going to get.

But it was sure fun to have a class warfare experiment from a volcanic eruption 1800 miles away.

I had just started working for Boeing in Kent a few months earlier. That day of the eruption I was hiking with my soon-to-be-wife on granite mountain near snoqualmie pass. We hadn't heard about the eruption, but noticed how dirty brown the sky became towards the east as the day progressed. My friend Steve was climbing on Mt. Adams and as the ash column rose up in the sky the air became so charged that their metal ice axes becan to hum and spark. Days spent glued to the TV watching scenes of the lahar, mudflow, rescues. No widespread internet with live streaming then, you had to wait for the evening news shows. Weeks earlier, the debate on whether the reopen the area for recreation got people very excited, not unlike the recent "let us fly again" discussion in Europe. Then when the blast came and so many people were killed, some started accusing the state authorities of being lax by not forcibly evacuating people. Up in Seattle we were able to collect a bit of fine pumice from our porch after one of the subsequent eruptions, but never more than that. It launched a lifetime interest in eruptions for me. I still regret not having climbed St. Helens to it's pre-eruption summit, but if Baker, Rainier or Glacier peak loose their tops I'll be able to say "I knew her when she was taller". Mt Adams seemed too long a drive back then and now my poor lungs limit my climbing to only flat low elevation mountains

My company transferred me from NJ to Beaverton, Oregon in early May of 1980 and I spent all my free hours as close to Mt St Helen's as possible as I wanted to photograph the eruption. There was continued coverage of the mountain bulging the days proceeding the eruption so there was a good idea it would erupt soon and most probably from the area that was bulging. I was in a hotel off I5 just south of the Washington boarder when the volcano erupted Sunday morning May 18. I rushed up I5 and photographed the eruption near Kalama, Wa. For a short period the ash was in a perfect mushroom cloud which I photographed before the jet stream started pushing it east toward Yakima. I went further up I5 in Washington State photographing wherever there was a good view. I spent the day traveling all around the west side of Mt St Helens. When I went to head back south I found myself trapped north of the Tuttle River. So much material had accumulated into Spirit Lake and down the rivers the I5 crossing was closed to traffic as the rivers had taken out the smaller bridges just east of I5. Mt St Helens shot another large ash cloud around June 20 which went more southwest and gave us a covering of ash in the Portland metro area. People were instructed to wear surgical masks until it settled days later. Another ash cloud occurred in July but neither were the power of the May 18 eruption. I spent most of the summer weekends of 1980 around and in the Red Zone photographing and collecting ash and other samples.

I was living in Virginia, a freshman in college. My best friend from HS went to the University of Washington. All I wanted was a vial of ash. But no, he gave it to a hot chick he met in a bar outside Springfield, Illinois. I'm still pissed.

I was 14 at the time and I lived in the coastal mountains of Oregon, between Eugene and Florence. I had spent the night at a friends house and we were out feeding the chickens when we heard a series of loud noises. It sounded like dynamite blasts which weren't that uncommon in the area as logging roads were being built all the time. The thing that made it unusual though was that it was a Sunday morning and no road building was going on at the time. My friend and I remarked, jokingly that it must have been Mt. St. Helens finally blowing its top. When we finished feeding the chickens we went inside and his mom told us the the news, that it had blown.

I wasn't exactly around when St. Helens blew, but I've always been fascinated by the volcano. I find these personal stories very interesting, especially the stories of those who made pictures of the event. If you haven't already, maybe you can send them to Erik as well, so he can post them together with your stories? 'Glrnn Gouldey' (comment #11) for example :-) .

Thanks!

OT-4.1 quake at Iliamna in AK. 6.3 and 6.6 quakes between AK and Russia in the Bering Sea.

I was 10 at the time, living in suburban Portland, roughly 60 miles from the volcano. Since at least a year beforehand, I'd been interested enough in volcanoes to check out USGS publications on the Cascades from the local library, and I'd worn out my own copy of Harris's "Fire & Ice," so obviously I was excited when Mt. St. Helens began erupting in March, 1980. On the morning of Sunday, May 18 I was at a neighbor's house when his mother told me that Mt. St. Helens was blowing up big time â we'd heard nothing. I rushed home, turned on the TV, and saw the massive mudflow churning down the Toutle River. It was overcast in Portland for much of the day, so for quite a while the only footage was of bridges getting wrecked, etc., and there was nothing to see from the city. But it cleared later, and my family went up onto a hill late in the day to witness the ongoing eruption. The mountain I knew seemed half gone; ash boiled 10 miles into the sky. I think my parents had a hard time pushing me back into the car to go home.

I was on a boat near Reedsport, Oregon when the volcano went off. We actually heard the boom, thought it was the fuel dock exploding again. (Long story...) When we found out that it was Helens we were amazed at how far away we had heard it. THere was this crazy guy who was a media hero for staying through the evacuation, he died of course (along with some scientists.)

A college friend of mine had been in Portland during the eruption. He had gone in to see an afternoon movie (Star Wars? memory is hazy) and when he came out it was pitch black.

I have a beautiful glass bowl made from Helens glass.

Geoerge, do you refer to old Harry Truman, immortalised by R.W.Stone in this song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGwa3N43GB4

I was a graduate student at Washington State in Pullman, directly in the line of the ash cloud as it moved eastwards. I lived east of town on the Moscow-Pullman highway and that morning I watched part of an NBA playoff game in the morning and news bulletins that the mountain had blown interrupted the broadcast. I had duties in our animal room to take care of that afternoon, so I thought that I should get them done as soon as possible. As I rode my bike west towards campus, it was a bright sunny day, but it looked like a massive thunderstorm was moving eastwards dark, billowing clouds in the sky about 20 degrees above the horizon. I had the radio on and was listening to the reports and by the time I had finished most of my work and had a chance to look outside, it was after 2 PM and it was getting very dark. I walked to the student union to see what was going on and to see what was on TV. A whole lot of people were in a state near panic since no one knew about the toxicity of the ash. I returned to the lab and made sure that all windows were closed and I found a supply of standard filter masks and returned to the Student Union and handed them out to anyone who wanted one as they were exiting the building. As it turned out, no one needed them that badly.

My sister and I were playing in our backyard in West Seattle when we heard the boom.
I was 6 years old. I remember lots of phone calls with our relatives in Yakima, watching footage on TV, and bitterly wishing that the wind had been blowing towards us so our school would close too.

I was four when it happened, so I only remember that I did hear about it when it happened, but I have no direct memories.

Being about 7000 miles away from Mt St Helens I don't have any personal experiences; my only abiding memory is blagging my way to a friend's living room to watch a news item on the eruption with those famous time-lapse photographs. (I didn't have a TV of my own)

"I have a beautiful glass bowl made from Helens glass."
George: saw that comment and was struck by the odd coincidence, the UK town called St Helens, in Lancashire, is famous for...glassmaking!

Ron: you were intending to go camping north of St Helens that weekend? That hangover probably saved your life

I was living in Mexico - a country with high volcano awareness - and the initial media reaction made it sound like the entire Pacific Northwest had been annihilated by something the size of Krakatoa. Pity there was no Internet, because being able to check with the USGS and volcano labs would have put the kibosh on many of the rumors.

One of my cousins lives in Montana, in the path of the ash cloud, and he said it moved in like a slow thunderstorm, but slightly gritty, . The wheat harvest that fall was superb.

I was living in Everett, WA (30 miles north of Seattle, ~150 miles north of Mt. St. Helens). I was sleeping against the south wall of the house and awoke to what sounded like two sonic booms. Once we learned what was going on, my girlfriend and I drove and hiked to the summit of Mt. Pilchuck from which we had a pretty good view of the plume. The second big eruption a month or two later was much more spectacular from the Seattle area (the plume rose a lot higher as I recall).

@17, no ash fell in Portland on May 18 -- only on May 25 during a subsequent eruption, and lightly at that. The only time it went pitch black in the middle of the day was during the solar eclipse in '79. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAacZoIJUN0

I've been learning English at the time of the eruption that I could only see on TV. But for helping my English I had a subscription on NatGeo magazine with the help of a friend living in Canada (from Hungary it was impossible to subsribe in those years) so I met the eruption in the magazine with the big article. (You can find it in the archives: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1981/01/mount-st-helens/findley-text/1

I was living in Richland, WA and except for the fact we had a 10 month old daughter would never have been up that early on a Sunday morning. We were futzing around in the kitchen, making breakfast, and I was looking out the East-facing window trying to decide if I needed to mow the lawn before our afternoon visitors arrived. There was a "Boom!" that I attributed to being a sonic boom, which are quite common in this high-desert area of Eastern Washington.

For years afterwards, on frequent trips between Richland and Seattle, 200 miles away, one could pick out places along the road where significant deposits of ash had fallen.

First, I thank God for my parents who nurtured my interest in volcanoes since an early age, six to be exact! There wasn't a volcanic area in the American west that we didn't visit at least once before I turned into a terrible teen (...weekend and summer camping trips that my younger sister, who was definitely not into volcanoes, quietly endured!,...Thank you Cindy!). At that age, just knowing that the white peaks on the western skyline were volcanoes was enough, but when Crandall and Mullineaux's (USGS) hazard study on Rainier was issued in 1967, in which the authors stated that, "Mount Rainier has erupted as recently as 150 years ago, and will certainly erupt again.", my young imagination became completely transfixed with the idea that I might someday witness a Cascade eruption (...imagine!,...right out my back window!!!!...)!
I am not sure if it was the power of suggestion, that people became more aware of the mountain's past, or the unrest was real but, beginning a few years later (late 1960s-early 1970s), reports of steam explosions, unusual glacial melt pits, clouds and rockfalls from the peak became frequent, adding some weight to Crandall and Mullineaux's statement as well as continuing to feed my curiousity about volcanoes.
Four years later (I was starting to get a feel for geologic time by then!), Mount Baker provided another boost to my volcano education by becoming "my first active volcano". Having to watch it slowly return to slumber over the next five years was tempered by the release of another Crandall/Mullineaux joint entitled, "Potential hazards from future eruptions of Mount Saint Helens, Washington.". I think everyone's familiar with their "...perhaps by the end of this century." statement in the bulletin.
Well,...guess where my family spent every one of my birthdays after issuance of USGS Bulletin 1383-C (actually, we started camping at MSH after Crandell and Mullineaux's preliminary findings were published in Science magazine in 1975). The upper Toutle River valley was amazing! You could observe layer after layer of young lahar, pyroclastic flow and airfall deposits by just walking along the fresh-cut river banks. I still have samples of andesite and dacite I collected during those trips. More amazing was the size and density of Douglas fir, Western red cedar trees, the lush growth overall in the upper valley was something I'll never forget. Visiting those areas after 18 May 1980 is what (for me) caused the immensity of what happened to really sink-in.
I remember reading about the 4.1 earthquake in the newspaper the day after it happened, on Friday 22 March 1980. Mount Saint Helens was a frequent producer of earthquakes and, more often than not, if an earthquake in the state was reported felt,
it occurred in SW Washington, "near Mount Saint Helens". But, this quake was a little stronger than most, so my imagination ran wild over the weekend with thoughts of it being the first in a series of tremors that would signal eruptive activity at the volcano (little did I know that another M4 quake occurred Saturday evening and by late Sunday night,...the precursory sequence was in full swing!).
Imagine my elation upon reading the headline (not page 5D or some other niche reserved for volcano stories in those days!) stating "scientists concerned that Mount Saint Helens might be waking-up."! As I said before, MSH frequently experienced earthquakes, but not swarms,...so, in my mind, there was no doubt about what was happening beneath the volcano,...and with Dwight Crandall's and Donal Mullineaux's volcano track record,...what would happen!
Seismicity at the volcano was reported to have eased dramatically by Tuesday, 25 March, but Mullineaux was quick to point out that this wasn't necessarily a "good" sign.
He noted that eruptions elsewhere had sometimes followed marked declines in
swarm seismicity. Right again! I was in the front parking lot of Eisenhower Senior High School on 27 March at 12:30 p.m. when a loud sonic boom-like detonation came out of the west! My suspicions were confirmed by radio announcements about a half an hour that MSH had indeed erupted for the first time in 123 years.
From the following weekend through 10 May 1980, I was parked either at the Camp Baker roadblock (Toutle River) or as far up the Cispus River Road(east side,...near Bear Meadow) as weather (not the volcano mind you!) would allow. I felt perfectly safe at both locations and believed I could easily "escape" if anything untoward happened. Yeah,...right!!!
Since I had spent all my money on weekend trips to the volcano from March 29th, through May 10th, without seeing much more than a few quick glimpses of the cone through a sloppy mixture of rain and snow (on the west side), slogging up a ridge through melting snow to gather a Mason jar of ash (on the east side), I stayed home on the weekend of May 18th.
On the morning of the 18th, I was laying-in, my mother and father were in the living room with their ritual cups of coffee and Sunday paper in hand when,...Ba-Boom! My dad immediately (jokingly!) responded with, "Mount Saint Helens just erupted!". Looking back on it now,...he was taunting me! Anyhow,...after another half hour (9 am), we started hearing these long, rolling peals of thunder. Problem is,...this was May (kinda early for a thunderstorm in Central Washington) and the storm seemed to be coming from the west (here, thunderstorms typically approach from the south to southeast)!
My father and I walked out our back patio which faces west to have a look. All that was visible to the west was a dark haze, no mushroom cloud or anything suggesting something volcanic, but a soon an unusually high cirrus layer pushed rapidly eastward over us (I had no weather training at that time but I knew it was quite high in the atmosphere) At about the same time, the lower level haze was upon us and shortly thereafter the street lamps began to activate (not unusual during a good thunderstorm). But soon, we began to hear something more unsettling, a light tick, tick, tick on the leaves of plants in my mothers garden. At first we thought wow!, static electricity, we need to go inside, but upon entering the house I got an idea about what else could produce that ticking sound! I ran out the front door and nearly slipped as I stepped out (in my bare feet) on the front sidewalk. I put my hand down flush with the sidewalk. When I brought it back up to examine, it looked as though I had talcum powder or baking flour covering my palm! I was beyond ecstatic!!!
From that point (maybe 930 am) things began to happen at a much more rapid pace. The cloud shut down the eastern horizon, things went black,...and the thunder! The thunder was like I've never experience ever since! I attended Naval forecasting school in Mississippi and witnessed (daily) thunderstorms as well as two hurricanes,...not even close! The thunder on 18 May 1980 was incessant and so loud as to just come short of shattering windows (I'm not exaggerating!)! You could not see the lightning whatsoever but the thunder!!!! Visible mixed in with the sparkling ashfall (under the streetlights), were occasional spiral-shaped fibres of wood (as you see around campfires!) and pinecone scales! Imagine almost eight hours of that!,...in total darkness, with sand falling from the sky throughout! A volcanologist's dream come true!!! My mom's nerves and many others I'm sure were frazzled but I absorbed every second of it through the distinct 5:30 pm sign-off blast (another sonic-boom-like double detonation!). Things quieted rapidly afterward. The next morning, we awoke to total silence,...not a bird, bug or other sound of anything living. Outdoors smelled like wet cement mixed with a slight hint of fir tree,...no sulphur smell whatsoever. In marked contrast to the day before,...eerily quiet.
I want to point out that,...yes I realize lives were lost and other lives were changed that day, maybe not for the better but,...that's what volcanoes do! That's why I study them intensely. I like to think that from each eruption studied, we glean something out that might limit future eruptions to perhaps being destructive but not deadly.

Shortly after the May 18 1980 eruption my Dad hired a light plane and we flew over the devastated area. I remember being shocked at what I saw. Mountainside after mountainside of toppled trees all pointing away from the volcano. Vehicles crushed by the falling trees with bodies still inside. I love volcanoes but this was the stuff of nightmares. I could say more but I'm leaving for Costa Rica in a few hours.

I was 14 at the time, living in Eugene, OR. I was visiting relatives in Seattle when the eruption occurred and I remember driving back down I-5 the day afterward (?). I remember that we were supposed to keep our windows sealed shut, but my grandmother was smoking in the car and I felt like I was suffocating.

I also remember visiting the area below the mountain very soon afterward with my parents - we drove up along a river (the Toutle river, maybe?) as far as we could go before reaching a roadblock. It was extremely eery, with uprooted trees clogging the river and everything blanketed in gray. Whenever I drive up I-5 now I see a big hill that used to be ash dredged out of the Toutle river - now it is covered with trees.

At the time of the eruption, my parents were riding their bikes from Eugene to San Francisco. They put "Volcano refugee" signs on their bikes and got a lot of laughs.

Can we post even if we weren't alive for the eruption? I know it sounds odd, but as a 3rd-grader in 1990, I discovered Patricia Lauber's children's book on Mount St. Helens in our school library...and I was transfixed and enraptured instantly. How her words and the photographs described what happened completely blew my 8-year-old mind--I had never seen or come across anything like it before. I lost count of how many times I reread that book.

On the date of Mt St Helens' eruption I was a police/fire dispatcher for Benton County, Washington- the Tri-Cities. We had been on alert for the eruption for a long time, and knew we were in Condition Red. It was a quiet morning, and my day off- but I was up early as I had a week long seminar begining Monday in Portland.

Amazing, but we still have pockets of ash in our gardens to this day, 30 years later!

How very fun to read all these notes! I hope you make it someday Smitha, don't neglect the Olympics when you do.

I have two strong memories relating to MtStH. When MSH blew I was in High School and entranced by rocks and geology, especially volcanoes. To my lasting distress my parents just didn't see a good reason to hop in the camper and drive N. from Southern California to see what was happening up close. Although, it was not for lack of effort on my part.

It was my 4th birthday and we were visiting family in Keremeos, BC, just north of the WA border. I clearly remember ash falling from the sky, and my Mom picking ash off the cake. Strangely enough, my Uncle in Clinton, BC, (WAY north of the border) heard the explosion, but we were relatively close and didn't hear anything.

I too have a piece of MSH glass, blown into an egg shape. It looks like the mountain is erupting inside it.

I was 9 when Mt St Helens erupted on May 18th 1980. We lived very close to the Mountain, on the South side. (Battle Ground, WA) I remember hiking on the Mountain and going to Spirit Lake before the eruption. May 18th I was at church with my family, as we were walking out of church we noticed the mountain erupting and the sky filled with billowing clouds. I do not remember anyone being afraid. Everyone just stared at the Mountain and the sky. We did not hear a sound or get any ash!
Thankfully the blast went North which is mostly National Forest because the South side of the Mountain is very populated.
I just went to Mt St Helens again 2 Years ago and hiked up it with my children. It is SO Amazing!! Everything is growing back and it is just so so beautiful. The Mountain was steaming when we were on it, but seemed normal to me. Alot of people think it sounds scary to go there even now, but it is one of the most beautiful places ever!

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. I was standing at Waterfront Park in Portland along the Willamette River and could see Mt. St. Helens erupt. It looked like an atom bomb but it wasn't. It was surreal.

On another day, I saw it erupt while standing on Broadway in front of Nordstroms. By then, it seemed like a normal occurance.

The strangest part was the ash. We all wore face masks so we didn't breath in the ash (glass particles) and used water to wash off the ash from the car windows so the ash did not scratch the glass.

One Thursday night, I left work and drove home in falling ash that was like snow. I could not see 15 feet ahead of my car lights. Very odd.

I was 19 at the time and living in Lake Oswego Oregon. We lived up on a hill (Skylands) with a great view north up the Willamette River, straight at the mountain. I recall watching the eruption and lightning which was really cool. Shortly after the May 18th event I was at a Grateful Dead concert at Memorial Coliseum when the band announced they had to cut their show short because ash was falling in Portland. The ended their show with "Fire On The Mountain." My folks had just had the wood floors resurfaced so I had to keep all the doors closed so ash wouldn't get onto the still drying finish. I'd spent many a summer up at the Portland YMCA Camp Meehan and had grown to love the area. One summner we climbed St. Helens. We camped at a feature known as Dog's Head which you can see on the left side of all of the pictures taken from the north side of Spirit Lake where Camp Meehan was located. All of the pictures that have the mirror image of Mt St Helens reflect in the lake were taken from there. The forest was quite different than that surround Mt. Hood, much less loggin meant more old growth. I can testify to the beautiful clear and freezing waters in all of the lakes (Grizzly, Panhandle, Obscurity, St Helens, etc). After arriving at Duck Bay they loaded all of our gear onto a old red life boat called Big Red. After we hiked around the lake to reach the camp the first thing we had to do was take a swimming test as it was an aquatic camp with skiing, sailing, canoes, etc. I'd taken years of swimming lessons but nothing prepared me for the shock of Spirtit Lake's cold water. The first time I ever went water skiing I was determined to stay up just to get out of that cold water. I made lifetime friends at that camp, my first girlfriend met there and still keep in touch 37 years later. The person who ran the camp's generator and craft lodge was Skip Chester Armstong who is a famous chain saw sculptor who currently lives in the Sisters area and he'd made a totem pole at the camp. Once someone nailed a 7 inch "male attachment" to it and of course we thought that was hilarious. When someone in our group would mis-behave, we'd tie them to the totem for public humiliation. I still have my brown Ragger scarf that Skip tied up at Ragger Point and I've never untied that knot. It still hangs on the post at the bottom of my bed. I was fortunate to get invited to help close the camp in the fall and had a blast. I'd hiked cross country from the Y camp up to Mt. Margaret several times and to think of the area as destroyed made my heart sink considerably. You see, I'd become so attached to the area as to want my ashes spread there. 30 years later, I know that the area wasn't destroyed, the area is rejuvinated and someday it will be like it was before.

I was going to college at Western Washington University in Bellingham, ten miles from the Canadian border. I am a very sound sleeper but a sonic boom woke me up that Sunday morning. I found out later that it was Mt. St. Helens blowing! They heard it clear to Vancouver, B.C. Oddly my grandmother in Kelso, which is much closer, heard nothing. Guess the sound traveled north.

Then I found out about the eruption and the tidal wave on the Toutle River headed for my family in Kelso and the choking ash headed for the rest of the family in Kennewick! Spent all day trying to contact someone. Luckily everyone was all right.

The eruption was very traumatic for me because I feel it wiped out my childhood. My grandparents had a cabin at the foot of Mt. St. Helens. The turn off was just beyond the Spirit Lake Lodge. This lodge was on the highway about a mile from Spirit Lake, and not to be confused with the Mt. St. Helens Lodge owned my Harry Truman on Spirit Lake.

My happiest childhood memories were spent at that cabin which is now buried under who knows how many feet of ash. The Mountain is gone, too, for this isn't the mountain I remember. That turned reality on its head for me. Nothing is permanent, not even mountains!

Painfully bummed and mulling over the significant of beingness

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

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Friday Flotsam: Iceland update, Kilauea slows down, videos of Colima and more!

eklemetti — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:45:46 +0000

Friday Flotsam: Iceland update, Kilauea slows down, videos of Colima and more!

News!

Colima in Mexico erupting in 2008.

The current activity at EyjafjallajÃ¶kull is more-or-less unchanged, with strombolian activity producing a 3-4 km tall ash-and-steam plume and the lava flows at the crater moving northward towards the GÃgjÃ¶kull glacier. You can check out an extensive page on the state of this eruption at the Nordic Volcanological Center - along with a new page with thermal and LIDAR information on the eruption from France.
The Icelandic Met Office notes that the lava has been producing meltwater from the glacier - which many Eruptions readers have noticed as floods spotted on the webcams. Things have, overall, calmed down, as the Met Office says "explosive activity and ash production represents a fraction of conditions during the height of the eruption." And, for all of you wondering, no measurable geophysical changes have been noted at Katla. If you want a good laugh, you can read the EU airlines response to a proposal for having the government foot the bill for the ash closure. One great remark from an airline executive said only governments had the resources to deal with the consequences of the Icelandic volcano eruption and "should therefore take responsibility."
In another eruption that appears to be tapering off, the east rift on Kilauea is showing signs that the 27 year-old eruption could be reaching an end. HVO reports that sulfur dioxide emissions from the east rift have been dropping (520 metric tons/day versus 2,600 metric tons/day in 2008), suggesting that new magma is entering the rift at much slower rates. However, the eruptions at the summit of Kilauea continue on.
The Colima Online folks have posted a series of videos taken of the Mexican volcanoes, including explosions, lava flows and lahars. The volcano observatory at Colima has also started using unmanned drones to watch the crater area of the volcano.
Do you live near Vancouver, Washington? If so, mark May 8th on your calendar. From 10-5 on the 8th is the Public Open House for the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory - you can even get a free Mt. Saint Helens 30th anniversary poster if you go. ou can find CVO at 1300 SE Cardinal Ct. in Vancouver, WA. And if you haven't been following the daily updates leading up to the Saint Helens 30th anniversary on the CVO website, you should be!
The latest USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcano Activity Report has also been posted. You can check out all the news of eruption from this week, including events at Reventador, Tongkoko and Pagan.

eklemetti Fri, 04/30/2010 - 02:45

Tags

Politics of volcanoes

volcanoes and the economy

ash plume

Global Volcanism Program

Politics

Smithsonian

St. Helens

volcanoes and society

volcanoes and the economy

The last thing I need -memories of ST.Helens I occasionally dream of flying that crater. There are adults now who don't remember, and I think it is worthwhile that the USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory is doing this..

Good ol' socializing of losses!

It is amazing how long the Kilauea rift eruption has been going on. oh well, maybe activity will concentrate on the summit again and we'll get to see the return of a lava lake at Kilauea. Now that would be cool.

Lots of steam coming from the split boulder on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli and vodafone cams mayhaps something interesting in the plumbing

Erik! May I suggest something? (I'll do it anyway! ;) ) Apart from GT McCoy, there's another former St Helens pilot who has posted here, and I'm sure there are more on here with direct experience of those days and months. Why not invite them to share their memories and experiences of it? Remember the person (sorry, forgot your name) who told us how his father, who trained the Apollo astrounauts in geology had gotten a serious bollocking from Deke Slayton for saying that "Portland would be covered in ash from Mt Hood(?) any day soon"?

Funny you mention that idea, Henrik.

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/04/send_me_your_mt_saint_helens_…

Phew! Beat the deadline by 3 mins or I would really have looked the dunce! ;)

That Tongkoko eruption is really surprising. I wonder if it is another instance like last year's Karkar "eruption?" There should be some local observation if it actually happened.

Can you guess how much the water rose in the last few days at the bottom of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull's glacier ?

Before
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/04/…

After
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/04/…

Also, no report on Chaiten for a month now. I wonder if that eruption finally stopped?

@Mr Moho - I've also just been looking at the outflow levels from the foot of the glacier - I have some old screengrabs going back to when the ash eruption was in full swing and the difference is striking. My take is that is not water - the whole thing looks as if it slopes back up to the glacier snout anyway - I think it's debris that is building up the equivalent of an "alluvial fan". New water coming down is depositing material in what, given no more splurges, will be a new terminal moraine.

It may be of interest. Pathological Geomorphology has spent the month on deltas. In two posting, they discuss lava deltas:

geopathology.posterous.com/behold-the-owyhee-lava-deltapart-1
geopathology.posterous.com/lava-deltas-of-the-owyhee-river-or-part-2

@10 Anne I was just looking at the same thing. The big rock(?) just to the left of the snout has 2 curves on the bottom of it that curl into the edge of the snout. Previously they were quite high and now the lower curve is almost covered. The area between the two land masses where the flow exists appear to be at about the same level. The angle has sharpened quite a bit.

@Anne Scotland Thank you for pointing out the 'alluvial fan'. Suddenly the picture comes into focus for me.:-)

i've been thinking about that
"Big Round Split Boulder"
could we be looking at the cross section of a hugh ancient filled lava tube?
Best!motsfo

@#8 The bottom, Mr. Moho, the bottom - the former lake basin is now mostly filled with mud and rougher stuff from above, easily visible in Vodafone pics.

@motsfo
"could we be looking at the cross section of a hugh ancient filled lava tube?"

naa it's just a large lump of dragon scat

aside from that i think it could well be a lava tube or the end of a lava flow well eroded and the fractured part looks like the material it was resting on eroded away and loosing support it fractured and fell

what would be interesting if a large lava flow could build up and push it out of the ravine

@motsfo (#14). I've had the same thought myself many a time - until I noticed how much of it was being eaten away by the water rushing through. Could it be glacial ice?

I think the water/mud is flowing off the side into that huge crack now. Not easy to see, but it seems that way. Also steam is coming from there very occasionally.

At this rate, after weeks of watching blurry images, through volcanic ash, rain, snow and clouds...I may as well cancel my cable tv.

When I mentioned a few days ago that rock looked different, ie. a seperate sort of bit to the rest (scientifically speaking...) didn't someone say don't even think it? Can't remember the post though or what the exact reason was.

I think if it was ice it would be showing the bluish color of glacial ice it could be a remnant of a ah-ah lava flow

@Diane N Ca re: April 27#374
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bts_v9mqv3g&NR=1

Spotted on the volcano webcam...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg

Cam viewing should be better tomorrow - IMO is calling for sunny with a NW wind.

@eddie 22: Not going bunny hunting in Iceland I'm not.

There is a hole in clouds now, and I see a ash like cloud coming from the volcano.

On the Poro cam a break in the clouds shows quite a bit of steam

QUITE A BIT? You say???

Interesting viewings at Porolfsfelli ... what looks like an ash cloud pretty low down, and oodles of steam coming from the vent...

The plume is showing on the vodafone webcam and it's brilliant orange ... perhaps caused by the sun, but way cool!

lovely orange plume at the top right of the vodafone cam

I don't know where all the meltwater is going (as it seems to have dried up) but if there's a blockage, I hope the people downsteam are ready for a flood.

21.28 GMT Did you see the copper-coloured glory visible through a gap in the clouds on the Vodafone cam! Absolutely gorgeous.

and poof the clouds close grrrRRRRR

I don't know where you get the impression that the flow of water has dried up; but if you look closely you see it gushing out of the gorge and spreading over the entire debris fan. The shape of the falls must have changed in the past days so that it doesn't produce as much mist as it used too, but the flow rate is definitely high.

I never imagined I'd be watching the death of a glacier on a webcam...

There is ash in the steam plume, you can see it collecting on the glacier...I don't think that it is shadow. Whoever said that Saturday morning is when we will see lava at the foot of the glacier deserves an E-beer.(I do not think that we will see it until then). I will try to find to post...

Clouds are blocking the orange plume on the vodafone webcam but you can get glimpses of it on the Valahnuk webcam.

This is so exciting after 3 days of snow :)

ValahnÃºk upper right side shows peeks at the orange plume ocasionaly

There must be a lot of ash in the plume because the background is almost black. Now if only all the clouds would go away so we can see evrything.

For those of you that do not have the links to the web cams.

http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndaen.html

I am watching the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell cam. The vodafone cam will not load for me.

It certainly appears we're seeing phreatomagmatic action further down the glacier than before - certainly beyond the active vents. Maybe by the end of the eruption we'll end up with another 'skerries' ridge...

@Kevin (34)

I based my comment about the water flow on my own observation and on Anna's observation in her post #10, that perhaps what we're seeing is more silt/debris and less water. I haven't seen any flow rate info for yesterday or today to know whether Anna and I are right or not.

From this layperson's perspective, it does look as though the opening on the glacier have been melted (or collapsed) into one longer opening. I have been watching Vodaphone for a while now, impressive at full screen :) It is where the main, vigorous steaming is emanting as of this moment.

There is quite a bit of ash burping in the background too. I have a hunch things are going to look very different in 24 hours there.

EYJ
http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/

Good view - eruption site - ash cloud is above the discharge key area. Wow how it has changed from day before yesterday.

On the Val cam previous eruption was far right on edge under the Mila label.

Wind NW but this looks not blow to center but straight up?

Gordys, MN USA....
It was me that said about the lava reaching the falls by Saturday....
I'm going away this weekend and won't be able catch up with the events till Sunday night :(
I'm not so sure it wont be early next week but if it is tomorrow and I get to hear about it, I'll have a beer and think of you lot...

#41, beedragon,

Anna's and my statements are not mutually exclusive. I agree that there is a large talus of rubble being built against the cliff, which grew several meters in the last day alone. But there is a lot of water on it. The level in the outlet channel and on the flood plain are quite obvious and on par with the hlaupses of a few days ago. Those might have had higher peak discharges, but this is a sustained high rate.

PS. My name is Koen, the abbreviation of Koenraad, the Dutch verion of Conrad.

@Koen (45) Sorry about getting your name wrong!

There's another thing that makes me think of a blockage, and that is that there's no steam coming from the lower opening.

The other day there was an huge amount of steam coming out from below.

I guess we'll find out in the next few days! I certainly don't mind being proven wrong.

@Chris: Have fun, enjoy the beer. We will see what happens...

Fire on the hole! A red flash at the top -

#46, beedragon,

No problem about the name. It happens a lot.

The steaming there seemed to occur right after a peak discharge. I guess water accumulated very close to the lava flow and could heat up significantly before the dams burst. That way the water could be hot enough to steam when it reached the opening. Somehow the creation of dams on the outlet flow seems to have stopped.

This does not mean there can't be any lakes forming up there. It is a large glacier...

If you missed viewing the copper plume on the vodafone webcam, you can see it archived here ...

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en

Change the time on the drag bars to hour 21 and the minute bar anywhere between 27 and 45.

Enjoy!

Wow! Finally!

The MÃla-ThÃ³rÃ³lfsfell web-cam showed clearly how far the lava flow has reached. The lava is creating this deep gash in the glacier as it goes, probably 200-300 metres wide.

Chris (#44): Don't fret. It will take a couple of days for the lava to emerge, to reach the lowland.

The daily Report from the Institute of Earth Sciences, Nordic Volcanological Center for the 30th of April:

http://www2.norvol.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption?191,32

Salient points - Eruption plume height 2.8km above summit (radar observation at 15.20), 4.5-5.1km steam plume (TF-SIF at 15.40). No meaurment of magma flow possible. Meltwater peaked at 200 m3 per second at 14.00GMT. Deflation confirmed. No measurable indications that eruption is about to end.

PS. At 200m3 per second, if sustained, the glacier would lose some 17 million m3 as meltwater every day, steam not included.

http://www2.norvol.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption

"Additional note: Plumes of white plume were noticed over GÃgjÃ¶kull (15:40 GMT); this steam probably represents the position of the northward-flowing lava flow."

what is interesting in the eruption seems to have moved into or extremely close to the breach in the northern crater wall that has been the preferred route for water to exit the playing field,if dammed there may be a breach in the southern wall if so it will have to gain a much larger volume to start exiting there and then it will erode a path rather quickly the flow could be huge before it is over

The daily report by the "Icelandic Meteorological Office and Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland" has been issued:

http://en.vedur.is/media/jar/Eyjafjallajokull_status_2010-04-30_IES_IMO…

Among others they report that "Steaming blocks of rock are being deposited in the GÃgjÃ¶kull basin; these blocks are probably solidified lave from [the] eruption." Looks like the lava fall is getting closer to becoming visible. With some luck we might spot some incandescent material tonight already?

Build your own EyjafjallajÃ¶kull

Fancy your own table-top volcano? Well, with card, scissors, glue, and a little patience, you can build your own three-dimensional model of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, courtesy of the British Geological Survey.

http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/build-your-own-eyjafjallajoku…

Not the best picture on the Porolfsfelli cam at the moment, but you can clearly see how far down the slope the lava is!

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-fimmvorduhalsi/

Fire light appears with a wider base than previously.

Not the best picture on the Porolfsfelli cam at the moment, but you can clearly see how far down the slope the lava is!

Posted by: beedragon Canada | April 30, 2010 7:13 PM

Unfortunately, unless the wind shifts, it looks like all that steam is going to block our view of the nightly lightshow from the ValahnÃºk cam.

We will just have to alternate between the Val and Poro cams because you get clear at times on one and not the other

Porolfsfelli cam looks like a surrealistic movie of a wizards fight rather pretty with the steam light from the bottom with fire balls rising from the ground

This is a link to how GÃgjÃ¶kull(the glacier) was before the eruption. Thanks to Passerby for posting the link in an earlier thread, passerby acknowledged an earlier poster for this link, but I could not find that post. I apologize for not being able to thank the original poster of this link.

http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/gigjokull-retreat-and-eru…

Unusual EQ's in the Bering Sea. Both events were at least 6.0. The orders of magnitude are not that great, but the location(s) are unusual, they are on the continenetal shelf.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010vscx.ph…

The RSO webicorder on Redoubt is just now recovering...
http://www.avo.alaska.edu/webicorders/Redoubt/RSO_EHZ_AV.php

Folks: if you do not know how to copy-paste the name ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli, at least you should have the smarts to figure out that the letter in the beginning is not a 'P'. In transliteration into the English alphabet, it's 'Th'; in fact, you had that letter, but it got dropped in times past. So, use the Icelandic letters, or use standard transliteration; in this case, write Thorolfsfell. (Is that ok? Anna? Jon?)

+1 to Kultsi; that's been irritating me for weeks now but I was too polite to say anything. It's *ignorant*.

#64 OT In the US very few schools offer a second language. Very few US citizens can speak a foreign language. Many of our colleges no longer require a foreign language. We are only bi-lingual if immigration has occured and the immigrate speaks two languages. With the US financial situation it will just get worse. So it really has nothing to do with smarts - just a missing aspect of the US educational system. I know in Europe with countries small and border countries a different language - speaking languages are more highly valued. Spanish language speakers may in the future out number the English speakers due to immigration.

Interesting show on http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-fimmvorduhalsi/ . A few moments ago, we could see some "overflow" from the eruption illuminating to the left of the eruption. Seems we can see the lava flow at a times.

huge explosions on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli cam,, worth stopping up for. lol

Re OT.. Here in the UK learning a second language is compulsory in schools from ages 11-14.. All schools teach French, other languages available in some schools are German and Spanish..

OT Language Cultural Sensitivity

How to put foreign language characters into EMAIL:
http://email.about.com/od/netiquettetips/qt/et_any_char_win.htm

Each US computer Apple or Microsoft is different. This isn't a tech help site so if you can't do it on your own ask your IT-computer tech person at work or your local school computer tech person.

We can sometimes catch a faint fleeting light at the bottom of the image (outflow, I guess) on fimmvorduhalsi! Lava flow?

Birdseye, #21, thanks for that. What is the symbol just before the NR=1 at the end? I am not familiar with it. I don't see it on my keyboard.

Thanks.

@JB 69 et al - I have used for some time something called "Pop Char" loaded into my Mac (older and newer) - handy little icon will appear in Finder and offers a number of one-step insert possibilities.Perhaps there's a PC version. (And there's a BGS volcano in our house from whenever the first post came up earlier today on the old thread - thanks!)

@Diane71 This one has English too, the other one has less background noise. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSD0vRFhloI&feature=related

The other one is www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bts_v9mqv3g&NR=1
I just copy and paste or I mess up! (It's a capital 'and' sign - & - , sits above number 7 on my keyboard...)

#64
Sorry to all Icelanders in this blog for the mistaken spelling of âÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelliâ. On my first posts, I used the Google translatorâs form âThÃ³rÃ³lfsfelliâ, but then I thought it had been assumed as a convention (which I find so cute) to just name it âPoro â like âPoro camâ, and âVala camâ, and I went on using the abbreviated forms (copy and paste is not so quickly available). Please, donât take it seriously. I am from Brasil (we spell it like this, with an âsâ not âzâ ) but who cares?. We must understand that in this new, globalized world, language should no longer be a barrier and English has been naturally accepted to be the global language. Can you imagine that we are people from so many different countries and cultures, all sitting here, days and nights, bewildered around this volcano (which name I donât dare to say aloud). Isnât that wonderful? All this time Iâve been enlightened from your scientific knowledge, poetry, Icelandic sagas, historyâ¦ could that be any better? Please understand our mistakes, or else Iâll be intimidated to post further comments, and once again my apologies. ÃAKKA ÃÃR FÃLK FRÃ ÃSLANDI, AÃ ÃVÃ ER DÃSAMLEGT LAND SEM ÃÃ HEFUR!
Renato (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/

No earthquakes in all of Iceland? Glitch? There were quakes reported on Vatnajokull at 9pm (ish) BST so those would not have gone off the maps yet.

There is no perfection to be found in any person...tolerance for our differences allows us to come together as a community. If this blog and its inhabitants upset someone perhaps this is not the place for them.

@Renato, It is we, the English speakers, who should apologise to you! I continually feel humbled by people all around the world who master my language in varying degrees, when I do not even attempt to master theirs. It should not take too much to realise from your name that you are possibly not British or American, and the comment about 'Poro' was, in my opinion, very petty. I saw your spelling, but it did not bother me, nor should it. I am, as I said, humbled by your command of English, and it would indeed be a shame if one rude remark prevented you from taking part in the future.

@74 Renato Well said. I for one don't worry about how correct or incorrect the use of a language is. I look for communication. A second language in America is still uncommon. I for example, have bilingual parents, but I am not. At the time (I am 56) being bilingual was a sign of not having separated from the "old country". We were in America now, not (fill in the blank) so we were supposed to speak English only. The world has now shrunk, but the mindset has not necessarily disappeared. Most Americans are not used to communicating with people from other countries. Therefore, recognizing different characters is "foreign" to them (pun intended). Even many educated people are like this. In my opinion, their loss. My keyboard can be switched to Spanish and German also. I'm not making excuses, just stating how it is. Please don't let this stop you from posting.
As a side note, how come Disney World is so popular with people from Brasil? :)

@Renato Please do not be intimidated and please keep posting we all try our best and that enrichs everyone's experience. Also like you name very similar to mine.

I posted these links before, but I don't think the comment was ever released from moderation.

Windows ALT keycodes: tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html
Activating the US International keyboard: support.microsoft.com/kb/306560

:)I most humbly thank you people for the wonderful time spent here! But,please, just ask ÃÃ³rÃ³ and Vala to come back to life!!!!
#78 Disney World? I thought it was popular all over this small world!There's even a park in Paris, isn't there? :)

@Dan I know you are from FL are you in a costal area?

@81 Renato You know now I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because I now have that song in my head. LOL

@82 Renee Yes, in Pensacola. We are watching closely for the possibility of oil hitting our beaches. I am also on the WUnderground blog keeping up with the progress of the oil spill. They say oil may reach us as early as Monday, but no clue how much.

#74 Renato, eu sou FinlandÃªs. That said, I think your sentiments about Iceland will be well received.

Why did I write my rant? It bothered me that after several pointers and nudges people still kept writing 'Poro' - that word has meanings in Finnish, but that is not the point - and the original could well be mangled into something that has very, very negative connotations in the place from where it originated. At least any Thorolf would not like being turned into Porolf.

Do we want that?

#83 ;) Dan We all hope it won't happen.

trying this
ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli
Yeah!
Best!motsfo
and Thanks for the correction.

Well, back to lurking for me. Bye, it's been fun

#84 :) Kiitos neuvoja, Kultsi.
I understand that! Please, folks, copy that:
ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli!!!!

@Kultsi, Askola, FI, In regards to the language situation I want to point out that it is common to replace the letter "Ã" with "T" or "Th". Depending on factors.

There should be daylight soon in Iceland. Daybreak is going to happen any time soon now.

@84 I believe if most here know they are saying something offensive to another person in another country they would not say it. It's hard enough when you have such varied linguistic backgrounds, but to get every little nuance or possible meanings of words is near impossible. I mean, really, this is an Icelandic word, on a blog where English is being used, read by a Brasilian, that evidently has a specific meaning in Finnish. Since for most on the blog English is a second language, pointers and nudges may not be understand. If something is offensive a direct approach might be more affective, especially if done tactfully.

@Renato - if we want a song in our heads, how about ManhÃ£ de Carnaval, sung by Elizete Cardoso?

# 89-91
That would be a great song to greet the new day. It says:
Morning, beautiful morning...
Morning, fallegur morgun ...
Huomenta, kaunis aamu...
×××§×¨ ×××, ×××§×¨ ××¤× ...
Ø§ÙØµØ¨Ø§Ø Ø ØµØ¨Ø§Ø Ø¬ÙÙÙ...

If you look really really hard you can see the ash plume LOL

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/iceland-volcano-plume.html

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/20-most-incredible-volcan…

Great photos of volcanoes from Space

@Renato + everyone

http://i41.tinypic.com/301mx6h.jpg

hardfiskur yum. I miss it so!

#93
There was a lot of lava and ash earlier this night. But then she calmed down...

#95 Nhum! Is that haddock? Love it!!!

It's so expensive in Brazil! We used to eat those with capers and cream at home. Miss it too!

I thought I saw shockwaves through steam on ValahnÃºk cam - Maybe it's time to go to bed, before some kind of UFO shows up. Night everyone!

Seriously? Dawn's breaking and the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli cam goes down? Someone's effing with us! :p

Then again, ValahnÃºk makes it look rather clouded in ATM.

Vodaphone also states Technical Problems

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43753

Another nice space pic

Val cam shows steam in the forefront and an ash plume behind it

101

Vodaphone also states Technical Problems

Posted by: renee | May 1, 2010 12:38 AM

Working for me. (although loading time demands some patience) Some clean snow on the mtn and on the "delta". I guess runoff has slowed during the night.

Beautiful weather on the Val Cam

no clouds that is all steam too bad we can't get a wider pic on the cam

What happened to the GOD webicorder? The others showed a moderate jump in activity at the same time that the 'corder went down.

with the vodafone webcam working again, I was able to do a partial time-lapse with the data from yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDoNvZc0P2I

The amount of meltwater is pretty big, and later in the time-lapse a lot of steam can be seen where the lava stream is eating away the glacier tongue.

cheers!

From 2004.

http://notendur.hi.is/oi/gigjokull_photos.htm

Looks like Eyjafjallavulcano is gone to sleep!

That's quite a crater in the top of the glacier now, the area where the lava entered the glacier.. steaming away, too.

Yes! Now I can see the crater. It`s huge! And it`s steaming too but not so much. The glacier has collapsed on the right side it looks like so at least.

If you zoom right in, you can see a small dark patch below the main dark crater area - that has recently started producing steam, too. Descending from that area looks very cracked, I wonder if it'll soon be a line of steam heading down and then collapse in?

@Sofia (#109) - the volcano is well alive and awake, it's just that for some time the bad weather has prevented us from seeing it. Now, if you look at the one working live webcam - ValahnÃºk - you will see it's producing a vigorous steam and ash plume and from the information the volcanologists give, the lava flow is proceeding slowly.

eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/

www2.norvol.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption

No sleep yet for the volcano, and for those who don't succeed in tearing themselves away from the computer screen while the fireworks are up at night ...

very interesting light on the outwash now, voda cams up for the moment. It highlights big variations in the surface channels.

At the moment the ValahnÃºk cam shows a much denser ash plume than what it would seem to be from the Vodafone camera.

@birdseyeUSA - yes, I thought it looked like there had been a slip or avalanche or flow from right to left down hill from the new crater.. either that or they've been piste bashing lol

Big hole up there on the glacier! And what's going on on the surface of the next valley to the left? Looks as though there was some sort of flow from the new cavity, or perhaps just heat eroding the surface with prevailing wind?

@Helen Leggatt:

I remember your mentioning that you live in a farming community and that you are concerned about the welfare of the farmers and livestock in the area affected by the ash fall.

Here's a slide show you probably haven't seen. The pictures are 10 days old, from the time the ash fall was really heavy. They've since managed to clear away most of the ash, the weather turned nice and the fields started to turn green. But the day before yesterday ash started falling anew, turning the land black again.

Some of the ash is so light that it floats on the sea, forming huge "carpets" that are drifting into the fishing port of the Westman Islands, causing engine failure in the fishing boats. So now they're cleaning up ash there too. Eyja is certainly keeping people busy.

http://www.mbl.is/myndasafn/safn/1660/

@ Kultsi, Dan, Renato, JB, David,

I'm not at all offended by the 'Poro' moniker. Perhaps on a linguistics blog one would expect commentators to be familiar with all kinds of hidden characters on their keyboards ...

@Anna 118. Thank you for the link to the amazing slideshow.

There are quite a few images (16, 31, 89, 94, 96, and 111) that show the glacier tongue quite well and provide more of an idea of the scale and the changes over the last week or so.

Another image that I thought was excellent for providing a sense of scale is 134 (look for the little people).

And image 135 is just plain weird. Do you see what I see?!

There was a documentary about Eyja on Nat Geo tv channel last night in the UK. They interviewed a lady farmer who was stuck in the most horrendous ash fall with her sheep and baby lambs. The tv crew asked her to leave with them but she chose to stay with her livestock. What a brave lady, I really hope that she can get her farm up and running again after this is all over. The longer this eruption continues the worse it must get for some people, it must be hard to carry on when there is no end in sight.

the upper cauldrons are steaming, they were all quiet a while back. Let's see if the water picks up again. (Such minutiae, but that's what keep us non-pros watching...)

#97: Yes, Renato, it's haddock, allright. We call it 'Ã½sa', with a feminine gender.

Oh, and when folk sa mention the 'Poro cam', I tend to replace Poro with the Swedish word 'porr' = 'porn' in English. And then I have to remind myself harshly that there are (usually) no boobs on that cam - until a tour group passes by and starts acting that way.

@beedragon120, and thanks to Anna118 A great compilation (including, must be, the lady herself in 135? She's looking rather too pleased...)
Seriously, the photos give a view beyond the spectacular, and help us try to imagine the assault on all the senses as well as the strain of endless coping over the long haul.

Apropos of last nights' conversation, very interesting conversation about language(s) and the internet at www.onthemedia.org/topics/the_internet/1 Available as podcast, no transcript yet.

The clouds are periodically breaking up on the Vodafone cam showing the ash cloud now. Still chugging along...

This is what I saw earlier this morning on ValahnÃºk cam. I was too sleepy to be sure of my eyes, so I just captured a screenshot. It happened so quickly, I almost missed it. I thought they might have been "shokwaves" (or just a windgust?). I'm not sure they could be seen on a low-resolution video. What do you think?
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jwzm2rlmm4n/shockwaves.jpg
And here another of my pictures taken on april 22nd. One of my best. You can see the glacier still holding on to the slope.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jwzm2rlmm4n/AshEyjaf.jpg

That white streak on the water that can be seen on Vodafone camera, at first I thought it was a light reflection, but I now think it's a strong jet of water coming from the glacier opening. Any thoughts on this?

#125 Birdseye, thanks for the link! With the quality of the podcast, there is little need for transcription, really.

@MrMoho128 I think you're right - looks as though it's cutting behind the upper side of what earlier this morning looked like a big washout gully. Things have changed in the watercourse, wonder what we missed overnite...

I have been wondering why do they say that "..there are NO indications that Katla is about to erupt." (hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html).. Wikipedia states that Katla's eruption has been expected since 1999 - and now suddenly they say that this risk disappears as Eyja started to erupt (even though Eyja's eruption has usually preceeded Katla's eruption)..?! Find this a bit discrepant particularly taking into account the large amount of tremor activity and earthquakes around Katla during the last two weeks.. Could someone please explain to me why the risk of Katla's eruption has now disappeared and what would be the earliest signs of Katla's eruption?

@MrMoho128 on the other hand you can see new water coming and it's dirty- might be light after all, it doesn't seem to change at the downstream end.Also using the rock/ice face curve to measure, the water is down a lot or has carved away a lot - more flow seems to have gone to the left and at the moment the overflowing part doesn't go all the way right.

#128 I'd say it's meltwater from top of the glacier, coming down from the right-side gorge. In the larger picture you can trace the channel goin up and to the left. It's cleaner water, as there is not much mud on top of the glacier and it's probably mostly from recently fallen snow.

Check the Hvollsfelli cam

#134 I'd say new water into the fire...

#131 Just being curious:
I really don't get what's being said about Katla (I'm no expert on the matter, just wondering)
"The present volcanic repose is among the longest known in historic times, but monitoring of ground deformation and seismicity does not reveal any signs of reawakening." - http://www.earthice.hi.is/page/ies_katla1918
"In 1999 there was a glacial outburst at Katla volcano, possibly caused by a small eruption under the ice. (...)The source of the melting was a depression formed in the glacier surface. The flood was preceded by a burst of seismic tremor. (...) Geothermal activity at Katla increased since 1999." - http://www.volcanolive.com/katla.html
My question is: if there was an eruption in 1999 why should it be considered "overdue"? What it takes to call the 99 event an eruption?

@just being curious (#131) Where to start? The tremor at hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html#googtrans/auto/encomes from Eyjafjalla in spite of the "Katla2009" in the URL. There have only been a few earthquakes at Katla during the entire period from February, look at Soucel's excellent time-lapse of the activity leading up to the first FimvÃ¶rduhals eruption at islande2010.mbnet.fr/2010/03/eyjafjallajokull-levolution-des-dernieres-heures/ and you will see what really intense activity looks like. In the same period, February-to-present, there has been greater earthquake activity at volcanoes such as Bardarbunga, Askja, TorfajÃ¶kull, Herdubreid, Kistfell and about a half-dozen others than at Katla. Finally, if you go to www2.norvol.hi.is - the website of the INSTITUTE OF EARTH SCIENCES, Nordic Volcanological Center - there is a great deal of useful information. I can assure that the professional's view of the connection between EyjafjallajÃ¶kull volcano and Katla is quite different from that you pick up in the press or on many websites!

Btw, welcome!

Have not seen the webcams since Wednesday and bot what a difference. The melting and steaming are way up.

Well, I missed the discussion last night about language. I appologize for using a "P" when refering to the cam. I don't know how to do it otherwise except to now use "Th" instead.

I once was talking to someone from England and we were discussing the various differences in what people say and the slang. People here in the US think they can go to England and do just fine because the language is the same, right? Wrong! My friend told me that at times she would call her mother and tell her to "knock me off in the morning" meaning "give me a call and wake me up". We both agreed that it could have very different connotations here in the US!

I have another on for you. This is really funny. A guy I know was in Romainia and they have some kind of soup there that, well, some people would not appreciate. He did try it and was polite about it and word got around that he liked it. He was eating with several others on another occations and the subject came up. He said, "Oh, that is caca." Ooops! One of the locals that was helping him whispered, "Jack, some things are the same!" So the word meant the same thing in Romanian as English!

Anyway, I will see if I can get the right letter or just use Th. I am not very computer saavy and I don't know how at the moment to get other language letters. So please be patient.

As for the weather, um, well, I am not seeing much. Cloudy, cloudy, cloudy. Maybe later it will clear up a bit better. I guess we will see. Waiting again. Arg!

I think, Erik, you'll need a Katla Special on your blog soon...

#131: The geologists say there are no indications because their instruments show none. No Evil Secret Conspiracies there. Some of'em may even have loved ones in the area.

They base what they say on what they know about Katla's own system of magma chambers and pathways. That system probably doesn't connect with that of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull until somewhere deep down.

If I understand what I've read correctly, the geologists think that this eruption may actually be taking pressure off Katla. If so, good on ye.

Katla isn't Old Faithful. She doesn't erupt on a set schedule. She'll erupt one day, all right, but it won't be until SHE is good and ready. And hopefully the geologists will get plenty of warning beforehand from their GPS recorders and seismometers.

@just being curious #131 The reason they are saying that there are no indications that Katla is about to erupt is that there just is no evidence that we should be concerned about an imminent eruption.

It's very tempting to talk about volcanoes and other natural events in terms of being "overdue", but that's not really how they work. Let's take the example of a "50-year storm", i.e. a storm of a size that is expected, on average, every 50 years. Now, statistics can take all the data on storms of certain size and when they occurred and then give us an average length of time in between these storms. But it can't tell us when the next storm is going to happen, which is why you can get two "50-year storms" within a few years of each other, and it's still a "50-year storm" because you're taking centuries of weather data and averaging it. That can only tell you about the past, not the future.

Volcanoes are the same. We can take data about the frequency of eruptions, but that doesn't tell us much about when the next eruption is going to actually take place. Volcanoes are complex systems that can change over time. They sleep for centuries then explode into life again, or they die off completely, or they make small, frequent burps instead of big eruptionsâ¦ They aren't mechanical systems that repeat the same behaviour after the same time interval.

So whilst it's tempting to say that Katla is 'overdue', (and I know I've succumbed to that temptation before), there is no eruption prediction date that she has 'missed'. Statistically, it might look like she's overdue, but that's really just a construct created by us humans to try to rationalise an unpredictable event.

Iceland is a very seismically active area, so a few earthquakes and a bit of tremor in the Katla's area doesn't signify that she's about to wake up. There is what appears to be an historic link between Katla and EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, but again, that doesn't tell us much about whether Katla will erupt this time, or not. And if she does, there's nothing to tell us when she might blow.

So geologists look for signs - increased seismic activity, degassing, etc. (others can explain better than I) - that might indicated an eruption coming, and at the moment they are not finding any of those signs. So there are no indications that she's about to let loose.

Risk is not the issue here. As I understand it, here is a pretty high likelihood that Katla will erupt again at some point (i.e. she is not classified as a dead volcano), so one could say that, over geological timescales, the 'risk' she's going to erupt is 100%. What we are much more concerned with is, Is she going to erupt soon? Answer: We have no real clue right now.

So don't worry, there is no discrepancy!

Somebody joked about getting a pair'o'b*bs on the web cam. Well, I did, sorta, on the Vodafone cam - and fortunately copied the pic, as she was gone the next moment and the pic never ended in the archive.

Hoo-boy... I almost want to go skiing on Eyji now.

Eyja is looking very pretty on the Voda-cam now with her duo-plume, the white steam and the ash plume behind.

Lots of steam but not much water seems to be coming out ...

Voda seems to be overloaded in eastern US but Mula cam shows both eruption and steam to left

You're 'luckier' than me, then. I've seen a fair few tourists acting like total boobs, though. (boob = slang for 'idiot')

If I have my geography right, on the Hvolsvelli cam, you can just make out the steam plume from the lava flow puffing it's way down the left flank of the mountain. (sort of at 10:00 from the house on the hill)

for newer viewers, mula cam is www.mulakot.net/myndavelar.html

I did just see a smoke ring come from EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.

Here is the picture of the smoke ring.

http://www.jonfr.com/myndir/v/geology/eyjafjall2010/Smoke_ring_16_13_1_…

@birdseye

"Voda seems to be overloaded in eastern US but Mula cam shows both eruption and steam to left"

That's a crying shame because the Voda-picture is postcard pretty.

@149: that's visible on Hvolsvelli and Vodafone.

Reynir, "boobs" means the same thing here in the US, idiots. It an also refer to something else, too. LOL Many years ago there was a joke here in the US about who has the biggest "boobs" here. Answer: Mrs. Carter. Her sons Billy and Jimmy. Very old political joke.

I checked the cams and I am seeing a combination of clouds, steam and ash, but it is hard to really see what is going on. Does anyone know about the lava flow?

more activity?

Henrik yep I don't even fault Beatty for the way the British handled their ammunition....I do fault him for closing the distance with Hipper and losing the advantage of longer ranged guns. Also Beatty didn't do the most important thing he was tasked to do....communicate the the Germans positions to Jellicoe. If you ask me Beatty suffered from the same faults as "Bull" Halsey....more courage than brains. Room 40 actually won (strategically) the Battle of Jutland for the British;)

Definitely more activity, at least for a while: a heavy ash plume and now lots of steam spewing from the GigjÃ¶kull lava channel.

Difficult to tell with interaction of steam and low cloud, but steam column seems visibly higher than screen shot I took an hour ago.

Hmmm. Seems to be some clearing on the Hvo cam. The Vala cam still has a lot of clouds on it or maybe it is a lot of steam and ash. I do see the ash.

Definition of idiot: jerk, dunderhead, bonehead, the other two words for donkey, also the word "idiot", alpha hotel (anybody here who has flown will know that one) and I am sure you have the idea. ;-P

@Henrik,Reynir, Suw and all
Thank you once more for the precious information. I went through the article http://www.vedur.is/media/vedurstofan/utgafa/skyrslur/2009/VI_2009_013… (skipped the technical details) and it really helped, along with your explanations posted here, to better understand the processes involved in such a complicated system. I just highlighted some parts below:
"The two volcanoes seem to be interconnected, since both of EyjafjallajÃ¶kullâs eruptions happened in connection with eruptions in the Katla system and the E-W striking fissure swarm of EyjafjallajÃ¶kull joins
with Katlaâs radial fissure system (Einarsson and BrandsdÃ³ttir, 2000)."
"Special interest is paid to the 1996 seismic swarm near the crust-mantle boundary, which could have marked the beginning of the 1999â2000 unrest and is the first such recorded in Iceland." (a common magma source?)
There has been already a lot of information on Katla on this blog, and the more we dig, the more we find. We all hope that both the Eyjaf eruption and the 99 Katla event may have exhausted the system's capacity of generating a larger eruption. Icelanders and Europe deserve some peace for now. Let us just enjoy all the beauty granted by EyjafjallajÃ¶kull.

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/#view=map fogot link sorry

Diane, it has puzzled me for a long time whether 'boob tube' referred to the boobs watching it or the boobs used to attract the former type. And, yes, I do know of this dual meaning.

Awesome view on MÃºlakot cam:
http://www.simnet.is/jonfr500/earthquake/vefmyndeyjafjalmulaen.html

@149 Jon could you look at the link i put in #160 would these correspond to the god and mid lines of your helicorder and the 2 very strange measurements?

Sun's light, black,white, blue
EyafjallajÃ¶kull
A knife in my heart

@Reynir #161 In the UK, in the 80s at least, 'boob tube' was also an item of clothing, specifically an elasticated tubular top for ladies which was held up primarily by friction. Always hated them myself, but they were popular with ra-ra skirts. ;)

Poro is Finnish for "reindeer". In other words, saying "Poro" in Finnish is just as offensive as saying "duck" in English. It's a wrong transliteration, but not offensive by any means.

@renee, I am not seeing anything unusual on the tremor plots or on the earthquake maps. But the harmonic tremor appears to be growing on this moment. That is a bad sign if it keeps it up at the current rate.

Is lava coming down the other side now on Hvolsvelli? I know we have had a bad few days of viewing, but I am getting a bit confused. It seems to have picked up in the last 30min, almost reminds me of a week+ ago.

Reynir, I know what you mean. I am not sure where that came from, but "boob tube" I think refers to some of the nonsense that is on it and also some of the people who watch that nonsense. Here, the media is mostly one-sided and that is all I am going to say about that. It gets too political.

I like some of the programs that are about history or nature. We watched the program about Eyjaf last night and I found it was interesting and also a bit shallow compared to this blog. But they did have a great experience and they also learned something from it. I think one of the most important parts of the show was them showing what can happen on a glacier. They did cover the dangers very well. Going to see a volcano is not all that easy and can be deadly. I have been on top of Mt. Lassen twice and I didn't have any problems except for my knees. (It took climbing Lassen to find out I have a problem with both of them. Boo!) Yet, there was a fatality up there when a couple of kids sat on a wall area and part of it fell on them and killed the boy. So even a non-erupting volcano can have its dangers.

I can tell you, though, if I could do it again, I would. It is a really neat climb and you can see Shasta from the top. I would have loved to have had time and energy to explore the top. I love the Lassen area. There are places that are much like Yellowstone and remind me of the Grand Tetons, too.

It anyone would like to know of a good book to read about California geology, I can recommend "Assembling California". I don't remember the geologist's name, but it is a good book to read. It is the same geologist that claims the Gulf of California will eventually open up and go into Nevada. At one time the Salton Sea was connected and there is supposed to be a Spanish ship buried out in the desert somewhere. That may just be a legend, but it could also be true. Sort of like the Lost Dutchman's Mine. At any rate, I did check on the idea of the area opening up and it is according to seizmologists. Not doubt the quake in Baja was part of that sequence. The faults run in that direction and the San Andreas is part of the system. There is faulting that runs up into Nevada and I suppose in several million years, there will be water there.

I guess I have rambled long enough. :-)

#166 'poro' also means 'grounds' as in 'coffee grounds', actually anything (discarded) of the same consistency. That's not offensive, either, nor did I say that any meanings of 'poro' were, in Finnish.

Copy/paste is a good way of getting difficult words, strange letters, etc. right: paint over the text, press , go where you want to put it, press and that's it. That way there's no risk of offending the locals. If something of theirs is funny or offensive in one's own language - well, then it is, no helping that.

#165: Oh? Always thought that was a 'tube top'. Oh, well. I'm a bloke, anyway.

#169: Reminds me of tha guy who stopped watching musicals. "Too much sax and violins," he said.

Wonder if the position of the steam vents means that the lava follows the west side of the valley.

What is it that makes people ham it up in front of a camera?

next they'll have to put up a fence.....hey guys, we can't see the water if you stand there!!

I'm just glad there's no sound from me to them. Why the cam were playing "A Swinging Safari" would no doubt confuse them.

I wish that "Shasta lenticular" would get out of the way! Maybe we could see just what steam and ash is where and if any lava is coming down the pike. I hope it will clear enough to see any Strombolian activity tonight and if any lava is flowing over the glacier.

Reynir, I think it is the same thing (people hamming it up on a camera) that people go on Facebook or Youtube or what have you. It seems there are those who are scared to get on camera and those who just want to have fun being a goofball. Oh, that is another term for "idiot."

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/ Is this really going on?

All the Icelanders here are sterling people and our friends who have been to Iceland say the same. However, there are some of those who walk in front of the webcams (such as the very big, bald guy in the orange and black jacket with a few teeth missing) who would make me think twice about going, so could the Iceland Tourist Board please fence off the area as potential visitors might be deterred... ;)

Looks like NW-ly wind there. If it holds or veers N, there's hope for clear enough sky to see what's going on tonight.

Down in front! :)

For anyone new: Click on my name to see a map of various features around EyjafjalljÃ¶kull, and for links to information sources.

#176: I was wondering if he'd tear the cams off and throw them down the cliff.

The MarkafljÃ³t level is slowly sinking, the temperature is up and the conductivity is down. Less direct water/lava interaction, IMO.

I can see more right now on the Vala cam than I did earlier. At least I can differentiate between cloud, steam and ash.

@renee176 - it's Iceland - lots of tremors -but here's a great link about frequency and strength...very helpful in understanding when to get excited!
islande2010.mbnet.fr/2010/03/eyjafjallajokull-levolution-des-dernieres-heures/

#179. "Throw them down the cliff"? My thoughts were rather "Is he going to have them raw or will he use mustard and ketchup?" ;)

#183: Nah, more likely the works: Mustard, ketchup and remoulade. Maybe even a but of hamburger sauce as well.

Renee, I have a term I use for the all the quakes we have in CA: backgound noise. Most of the quakes we have here don't mean anything. I think the same holds true for Iceland. Some of the quakes are just background noise and nothing more. The ridge is just active and moves just like the San Andreas. There is one town in CA where that fault goes right through town: Hollister. Almost every year they have to repair main street because of the offset. That is fault creep. With the Mid Atlantic Ridge on Iceland, they also have creep. The difference there is it is going apart, not sliding past each side of the rift. There are fracture zones that I am sure slide as they are strike/slip. But for the most part, the country is dividing and hence the rift we have seen in pictures and in documentaries about it. Iceland is a very interesting place for geologists and volcanologist to visit. In fact, John Seach is there now. At least he was and probably still is.

I wouldn't worry about the quakes unless they start another swarm someplace. I hope that doesn't happen.

Is the round grey patch that the lava is bypassing be the other end of the rock circle at the head of the valley??

Did you see the mudflow a few minutes ago att the vodafone camera? Really thick mud it seems.

Oh, well... looks like it's back to the test card on the Vodafone cams.

Vodafone camera working again - perhaps a tourist tripped over the cable :)

Many thanks for the comments regarding Katla (#136, #137, #140 and particularly Suw #141), all very informative to me. I didn't suspect that the information regarding Katla would be misleading, just wanted to understand *why* are they saying that she will not erupt.. True that I did not know the baseline levels not to mention any geological details of the system... Would be intrested to read more about predicting Katla's activity, the change that took place in the late 90's and the connection between Eyja & Katla. And yes, let's keep our fingers crossed that she will continue sleeping...

Best view right now seems to be on Hvolsvelli cam, full screen, with angled laptop screen. :)

The HvolsvÃ¶llur cam is a masterpiece right now.

*Shakes fist at Dan.*

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-thorolfsfelli/

I haven't observed this webcam enough to know how to interprete the size of this ash cloud - it larger than the steam. The Ash plume is above the low level steam/cloud cover.

Several studies by scientists today, including from the air, do not indicate a change in the progress of the eruption of which has been in recent days, as stated in the memorandum that the Icelandic Meteorological Institute and University emit tonight.

Lava flows continued to the north by a channel GÃgjÃ¶kli. There you can see white bÃ³lstrar. MagnÃºs Tumi estimates, however, that lava will two and a half to three miles, to go down GÃgjÃ¶kul. With the same extension, it would take quite a long time.

birdseye
Your computer translated kilÃ³metrar as miles?

@Bjarni196 - not my computer, an online service - Trans Star - they ask for help in making better translations - volunteer??

"Meltdown, volcano: Weary Icelanders ask, what next"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100501/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_iceland_s_rollercoas…

birdseye, 197
Maybe (probably not :). Can't find it with Google though.

@Bjarni199 www.stars21.com/translator/icelandic_to_english.html

According to a team that looked at GÃgjÃ¶kull today, the washout has caused a change in elevation of up to 30m (100ft) at the tip.

@193 Bjarni What, I'm just a faster typist maybe. LOL
Your spelling is different anyway. Mine is copy and paste from Mila web site.

http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en

available US West Coast now but it loads slow - give it 5-10min and it auto updates 10-20 secs

It can give you motion sickness! But I can get a quick peek - few seconds or study as it loads.

They say do not refresh your page on this site with the load.

Regarding night visibility: My home town is as far north as EyjafjallajÃ¶kull, and for at least a month of summer, even at midnight it is possible to read a newspaper by the ambient light (barring an overcast sky, ash clouds, fog etc.).
So you should have plenty to see around the clock, whether by webcam or by being there in person.
The morons who block the web cams will be gone during the nights, so it should make things easier.

I am getting really good pictures from the Hvolsvelli cam right now, compared to the Vodafone transmission which as appears much darker.

Does anybody know if this is due to the resolution of the webcams or their position with respect to the available light?

I think it has to do with the exact type of webcam in each place. All of the cams on ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell lose their sight before the others.

The Valahnjuk webcam has a good picture too, in the sunset http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk/

Re 205, I meant Valahnuk. Sorry.
It may well be picking up more light as it appears to be at a higher altitude.

Unfortunately most of the action on the Valahnjuk cam is happening on the other side of the steam plume.

I hope the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli web cam is fixed tomorrow. The vodafone web cam is really hard to watch with the constant reloading but it's at the best angle (until the ÃÃ³rÃ³ cam is back).

Personally, I think the view Vala is getting is so b4y gorgeous, I want to see it ona poster.

#205: ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell is about 130m (440ft) taller than ValahnÃºkur.

@Gordon: I think that Mila uses better cameras which can deal with less light and still deliver a good picture.

Sigh - how lucky we are - and yes, Reynir, a poster, please...

Hvolsvelli is getting the show now! The steam plume is dramatically lit by incandescence... Just gorgeous.

I just have to think about the "little dragon that could" story that was posted here a while a go...

Fra Hvollsvelli camera putting on a good show - wish it were higher resolution and that we could HEAR!

Time for bed. Aberdeen, Scotland is on the wrong side of Iceland timewise for watching in the dark. This has been my first chance to watch sunset over EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. It was worth the wait.

While watching the Hvolsvelli cam, it seems to me that the eruption had spread out quite a bit. Steam on the left, which I believe is being lit up from below and to the right where the lava keeps appearing. If it stays clear I think we'll see this well lit show all night.

Hat beastie in tossing lava several hundreds of meter above the surface of the glacier that we can see then add to that the depth of the hole in the ice could well add up to a fountain of over a Km
the cam is if i am not mistaken about 30 Km away from the eruption site

@218 Gina If what you say is correct, and I have no reason to doubt you, then those balls of fire it keeps spitting out must be huge. Quite a display tonight. Nice diversion for me tonight from the approaching oil disaster to our beaches.

Also note how tremors still keep rising in intensity... I wonder what's up for next hours!

the Hvolsvelli cam has not had direct line of site to the crater it has on clear days shown the ridge with the plume rising behind it so exactly how far below the ridge the crater is + the height above the ridge + the depth of the hole = mind boggling energy

US Gulf of Mexico off-shore oil rig collapsed and speading oil onto US beach line - Lousiana to Florida.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/bracing-environmental-disaster-10527489 US Commercial TV News

An unstoppable oil eruption of a different kind expected to be bigger than Alaska Valdez - BUT there has been some news reports of how our drilling into the crust may influence these other events such as Volcano eruptions. Any science there.

What's going on on Hvolsvelli cam? Is it merely a lava flow? Looks like a whole new vent erupting. I've been away for a while and look at this! What a show!

@Dan that is a horrible mess it will totally trash the tourist business in the eastern gulf and the price of fuel in ct jumped .15 today to 3.15/gl today, wasn't it BP that had a refinery in texas go bang about 2 years ago due to poor to no safety precautions bet they "hedged" it though

It's really very sad to see those news. And little can be done to avoid disaster. I don't see how mankind will ever learn. It's another horrible blow to people from Louisiana and USA. :(

@224 Gina BP owns the refinery in Texas City TX that had an explosion a few years back. Yes they ignored warnings.

@225 Renato What's bad is that mankind do learn, but often ignores what they learn.

on ValahnÃºk cam some interesting views as the clouds or plume allows sight, mostly deep red hopefully the wind will clear the obstructions away

vodafone is showing a interesting light show now

The action in the Hvolsvelli is great (though I wish MÃla would tilt the camera up or zoom in so those two bright lights wouldn't be in the picture). The plume was visible on the Surtsey webcam this evening - but just barely. Hopefully some people with good photographic equipment are out shooting tonight.

@Dan, I was just watching the news and I didn't see your reply. How many ash clouds, oil leaks, katrinas, what it takes to stop human stupid greed?
We'd better stick back to Eyjlaf - I still don't understand if that is just reflected glow or a flow or a vent. The crater is there, but the glow at left of Hvolsvelli is unceasing.

The tremor amplitude has been rising and has now jumped to the highest in two weeks.

hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/gosplott.html
hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/eyja_trem_auto.png

To me it looks like steam being lit from below and to the right. This steam looks like it actually starts even farther left. Then a little right is darker, either thick steam the light can't penetrate or ash? Then the nice fireworks. And on the right more dark which i suspect is ash based on earlier today, possibly mixed with steam. Kind of nice having some moonlight. You can even see the snow line.

@232: from here it looks even more impressive:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/god_trem.gif

Well, I've been away most of today and didn't see the action. But right now on the Hvolsvelli webcam it looks like a constant, strong glow on the left side that hasn't been there before. The eruptive activity at the main crater looks similar to what we've seen before.

Is there a new fissure towards ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfell? Too bad that webcam is down right now.

By the way, from the Vodafone camera (which isn't very far from the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli camera) at times some glowing is visible from three different spots.

It's certainly doing a pretty good 'lighthouse of the North Atlantic' tonight. With luck the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli cam will come back soon; the Mila cams all seem to auto-reboot around this time of night and maybe that will fix it... although it was at this same time last night that ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli rebooted and *didn't* come back!

I grabbed a screen capture from Vodaphone showing clearly where the lowest glow is down the glacier - come daylight I'll be able to correlate it to a visible feature, most likely a hole in the glacier.

Looks like the beginning of a cloud free sky in Iceland. This is the earliest I have seen dawn on the cams.

Mr. Moho & Fireman

Indeed, vigorous fountaining and quite a show (particularly on the Hvolsvelli cam). A few moments ago there were three distinct sources of light up there.

A few more hours and we will be able to see how much change the night has brought.

Let me correct that: NOT a few more hours, just a few more moments - it's getting brighter by the moment already.

I see 3 areas of either ash or steam. The main area with a darker ash plume with lava spewing every now and then, a large area of steaming and a smaller area to the left of that. Must just be the lava flow but I thought the glacier was that trough like area in the middle. Looks like a good day for volcano viewing today.

The eruption as seems to have widened.

I'm even seeing they lava fly on the Mulakot cam.
You can see a capture I made here:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4042/4569370711_4076c10cbc_b.jpg

Hvolsvelli camera now clearly shows 3 ash/steam plumes.

the tremor plots in #232 are now down

@245 Looks like a server problem.

On the ValahnÃºk cam steam is now originating from completely off cam to the right.

I just returned from photographing the volcano and spent several hours as the sun set on the flats below the vodaphone cam. As the sun was setting, two plumes were clearly visible. One is all steam which is clearly coming from the lava flow melting the glacier. Higher up is a plume that pulsed with ash accompanied by booms and showers of incandescent material thrown high into the air.

The steam plume is lit by strong incandescence from the lava below and extends about halfway down from the summit to the valley floor. As it got dark, a large part of the plume glowed orange. I just got back to my hotel and you can still see the incandescence on the cams despite the sun coming up.

Amazing stuff

Wow....the dragon is really angry today;)

dawn slowly sneaks up on vodafone

looking at the glow in the steam clouwd i wonder if there isn't a active lava lake under it

She has woken up from her nap and is shaking off all that frsh snow.

Watching Hvolsvelli cam and looking at the house on the hill, then the fireballs being thrown in the air. Those things are HUGE.

Someone better go wake Boris and Erik.

@274 Woodson You know we're all jealous of you, LOL
But maybe you can wake some people up and tell them the connection to the tremor graphs are all off line. ;)

Do I see a lava lake? It's so beautiful anyway!

ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli is back on line yaaaa
mas quantities of steam coming from the glacier tongue and impressive fountain activity up hill

Well ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli has rebooted itself as I predicted :-)

From my watching tonight I have prepared an image showing the three glowing areas seen by myself and others, and the corresponding feature by semi-daylight; circled in red in this self-explanatory image:

http://www.corestore.org/3glows.jpg

There seems to be no shortage of lava, and it's progressed further under the glacier than I had suspected.

If it's a flow, there's a lot of lava coming down.

on lava lake how deep is the caldera and how far down does the breach in the wall go where the gigj glacial tongue is

The mouth at the bottom of the glacier doesn't appear to be having such a big flow - in fact, although image v. grainy, it looks like it's clogged up?

I tossed the idea of a possible lava lake as a potential explanation of the really nice constant glow under the large steam cloud all night

Here are 2 images of the steam and ash plumes I saw tonight along with strong incandescence and explosive activity. These images are about 3 hours old and illustrate what many are seeing on the webcams tonight.

Cheers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/49883902@N08/show/with/4570132526/

PS I am from the US, so I am not sure who to bug about the seismic instruments going offline

@Woodson, you deserve a Pulitzer! Thanks for posting.

I don't think there is a lava lake like Nyiragongo's, with the source vent directly underneath. What I think is happening is that the lava-ice interaction has caused a series of pools to form, each lower than the next. The red glow we saw last night is the glow from the pools. That's my totally un-educated guess. :)

I just noticed that up near the top there looks to be one last ice bridge. If so, it will make quite a puff of steam when it falls in.

Woodson - so jealous of your experience. The shots are beautiful - I hope you don't mind but I shared the link on another forum on which we're following the eruption. Thanks for sharing you lucky, LUCKY thing!!

The Mulakot cam is worth a look too!
http://www.mulakot.net/images/myndavelar/14flugv.jpg

Breathtaking webcams & @Woodson also :)

@Helen
i also see no water flowing so will the melt seek the breach in the southern crater wall?

@261 Helen I agree, it looks like the flow has slowed a fair amount. Great cams, moving lava steam everywhere, and have to call it a night. I just KNOW I'm going to miss something tonight. :(

Woodson, awesome shots. Actually helped understand what I've been watching all night.

Woodson, just awesome. Your pics are beautiful.

I have been watching and now I need to go to bed. :-( I a very tired. I still want to watch, though. It is really something to see and it was worth the wait.

Catch you all in the morning.

Cheers from the Sierras.

@Gina - glad someone else noticed it. I do wonder where the water is going - or whether so much more of it is being turned into steam that there isn't as much of a flow. Either way, the water has/will find another way out - where might that be?

I have a question, am just curious so hope someone can help. If black ashy smoke is caused by water flowing into the crater and mixing with lava, how come the lava flowing down beneath the glacier doesnt make lots of black smoke too? There has to be loads of water pouring around the lava as it makes it's way down, yet no black smoke, where does it go?

Does anyone here have a link to an illustration of what the rock formation/geology of the valley would look like without the glacier? Might help predict how the flows may travel through the glacier.

Marginata, Scotland the ashy black smoke is ash being vented, the white smoke is from lava coming into contact with snow or ice.

Marginata,

The ash is coming up when water cools magma coming from depth at the vent causing the vent to be briefly choked. Due to pressure buildup, there is an explosion hurling ash and incandescent fragments into the sky. The lava stream is flowing and reacts differently when it contacts water. If lava cools, there might be some minor explosions but not with the force of clogging the vent. Therefore steam rather than ash.

@Marginata the black is the active eruption site
steam plumes indicate lava flows and there in lava in the steam look at the black under them it is not shadows not with the sun on the left side of the image

#273 Good question, Marginata. Doesn't it have to do with more fluid lava flowing down and more viscuous at the crater?

Looks like the water is temporarily blocked by lava and ice atm. Bet this explains all the white steams right now. So there's another flood to be expected sooner or later from GÃgjÃ¶kull. It's unlikely the water will find another way as it seem to have been flowing under GÃgjÃ¶kull from the beginning of the eruption.

I have been working ten hour days for the past two weeks so have not spent much time here. I have Sunday off and am glad to see the skies clear and a all the cameras working with great views. I may not get a good nights sleep tonight.
Doug

Might we see a cave in to the immediate SSW of the lowermost steam plume/vent on the glacier - I've been watching and there are changes to the texture of the snow there...

@Doug Merson,

I hear ya. It's a gorgeous view today - we've been waiting for this for days now.

At least it's the weekend and a bit of late night viewing will be OK...

Must go to sleep now. Enjoy the show for me!

Vodaphone closeup of the base shows water flow increasing. You can actually see it spreading.

It's amazing to see the vigorous steaming and how little water exists the mouth of the GÃgjÃ¶kull glacier. Looks like the lava managed to plug up the water channel.

My guess, it's only a matter of time until the water flow overcomes the plug and rushes out with force. I hope it won't be too bad and damage anything...

Ohh, I think my area to the sw of lowest steam plume is going next!

New steam vent forming much further down (possibly two) and meltwater now increasing at base. Along with the new extension of the lowest steam vent this could mean things are really heating up now (pun intended).

Steam beginning to vent from 2 new spots it appears.

Definitely two steam plumes in places lower on the glacier.

@Helen,

Yup, I see them too. Two new steam vents, although somewhere around there we've seen steam coming out on and off before. If that big chunk of ice falls it'll make quite a 'splash'.

The light on the Voda cam now is such that you can make out how the area has slumped just above the new, small vent ... I've wondered for a few days if that particular area would slip as it looks fractured around the edges of that lump of ice

Every once in a while you can see a puff of steam coming out of the left opening at the bottom of the glacier. Looks like the warm water is making its way towards the bottom already. She's on a roll today...

Hot water reached the top of the 'alluvial' fan. You can see it steaming.

All the while the right exit still seems to spout cold (i.e. not steaming water).

Very nice view indeed.

T r e m o r p l o t s are back

Wow

http://i41.tinypic.com/14ujlts.png

I think you guys on the left side of the pond are sure going to lack in sleep tonight. Very good visibility and the things are getting interesting. A jÃ¶kulhlaup might be next in the program.

Only 7pm here so I'm well placed to stare at the screen for a good few hours yet :)

I learned something today, thanks Kultsi, I now know what a jÃ¶kulhlaup is and it's definition is exactly what I've been expecting :)

@Kultsi,

Indeed, it's time for me to turn in, even if I may miss a bit of a spectacle. I hope to find a good description here, once I return....

Tremor plots have returned.

Tremor readings are now as high as during the second explosive eruptive event (the second high and short spike you see on tremor plots). I find it amazing that they kept rising in the short period of time I was sleeping, they now reached the highest *sustained* levels ever.

Steam and ash plumes also look bigger and bigger as time passes. I can't help but feel that something big will happen soon.

On the Vodophone cam it looks like there are some cracks developing around the lower edge of the tongue of the glacier, I wondered if the water will break through there this time instead of in the large crack which seems to be blocked at the moment.

Helen, why is it that your timezone and the context remind me of my visit in Rotorua? ;)

@Kultsi - that's because I am in New Zealand :) although I am on the South Island, by the Alps :) a long way from the smell of Rotorua ;0)

@Alison - I think you're right, I think if we're going to see a glacial burst that looks like the ideal weak spot. That area seems to have been slumping recently, too.

What is happening on the mountainside showing red to the right of the steam? Is it lava or a trick of the camera?

Light play on the camera

Vodafone cam 08.35 GMT - Notice the tiny steam plume rising on its own way to the left, at a guess 1Â½-2 km from the main activity?

@ Henrik, yes, I noticed that a while ago but thought it was too far away from the action to be relevant. Do you think that we will see things going off in the other direction?

Nothing volcanic about it and others visible in the Hvolsvelli cam. They are meterological phenomena.

#304 Yes. Now, that's what a Finnish 'haiku' is like. A bomb from the main eruption? I don't see any way of melt water running that way.

An update from the icelandic met office has been posted here:
http://www.earthice.hi.is/page/ies_Eyjafjallajokull_eruption

#304 Could that wisp be condensation from the steam plume? There is that stone sticking up, and it could be enough to cause the saturated vapor to steam up.

I think you may be right, Kultsi! Since you're a Finn (and I'm a Swede), I'm sure we've seen similar things "up North, Lappland-way"? Clouds coming into existance over ridges and larger rocks where it looks as if the ridge or rock itself is steaming?

Who is the guy on the phone @ ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli? He waved at us!

Fantastic display this morning anyway.

Wow, Eyjafjallajokull is giving us a fabulous show this morning! Really quite spectacular to see two such distinct plumes!

I have a question about the tremor. So, if I'm understanding the explanations I've read here before, the tremor plots are a sign of magma moving about at depth. They've been steadily rising over the last several weeks, and now they're higher than they were just before the main phreatomagmatic eruption.

Is the tremor *just* movement of magma at depth? Is it affected by the strombolian activity? How is it interpreted by the experts in the house? What activities do the different frequencies correspond to?

Thanks in advance for any additional information!

Amazing view today - nature is the biggest!
IÂ´m also curious about the tremor quest @312

Clouds! Hope they'll be gone!

should not have talked about clouds forming out of the blue - they did. Now Lady Eyja has veiled herself and is prolly sticking out her tongue at us and going, "na, na, na, nah, na"... Anyway, I, too, think the questions @312 were good.

I was hoping to see the lava flow reaching that massive boulder of ice hanging over Gig's throat.

2 plumes are very cool. The white area I am pretty sure is the lava flow melting the glacier as it pushes to the valley and the dark plume is the eruption feeding the flow.
The dark plume is quite strong so I would imagine there is a chance the flow will eat through the entire glacier and break out into the valley floor.

@312: tremor readings on the Vedur.is website capture not only proper tremor caused by magma movement, but also any other type of activity or otherwise noise that produces seismic waves. So anything, like for example water or debris flow, floodings, weather noise (at the moment minimal though), explosive events, etc., adds up.

I think that most of the tremor recorded at the moment is due to volcanic tremor, though. It might not involve more magma than before, but instead less magma, possibly less viscous than before, forced through smaller or obstructed conduits. A combination of several factors could make tremors stronger even if the amount of magma involved might be less than before.

Looking at the ÃÃ³rÃ³lfsfelli camera, there is a small puff of steam occasionally visible straight up from the cleft at the base of the cliff -it's a little ahead of the main steam coming from the trench. Getting harder to see it as the shot darkens with increasing cloud cover, though.

Waiting for lava made me think of this ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq_5QZDpY1Y

There are actually 2 plumes, erratic to say the least, below the main steam plumes. The lowest of the two you can see at the seam between the 2 Voda cam images in the close up view - it's a growing dark area with steam emerging. It also looks (from the close up Voda image slightly SE of the dark area) like water has flowed under snow and emerged again ...

#318 I guess lava is less viscous. Can't wait to see it leaking from the gully.

@beedragon320 A great wakeup laugh, that's hilarious in this context...certainly looks different from yesterday up there!

Muddy water flowing beneath!

I just came across a page that has all the gps charts, tremor charts, earthquake charts, etc. on one page. I'm sure this has already been posted, but for the slower among us (me definitely included), here you go:

http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/

seems to me all the water must be going up in steam...

@birdseye I'm inclined to agree with you. It looks like there should be a lot more water coming out of the chute for the amount of activity.

The lava flow looks like a kettle (well, maybe 20 million kettles) boiling itself dry.

@Renato324 now it's coming a bit

I see it otherwise:
Crater on the top - lava producing ash from strombolian eruption
Second level - lava flow (more basaltic) clogged in a pond producing huge amounts of steam
Third level (below) - melt hot water forcing it's way through ice. More steam, slower leak. Water gets cool, advance is slow (but thorough, for it's coming down slowly).

On April 20th our table on the terrace became dirty after a rainshower. These were the days when we had the colorful sunsets due to the airborne ash. I believe the dirt on the table (which had been cleaned the day before) might be volcanic ash. I used a clean fabric to clean the table and let the fabric dry. Today I scraped some of the dirt off the fabric and looked at it using a microscope:
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_CeTKUI7gs3E/S91y7By55mI/AAAAAAAAQ5o/bA1yNzxSBb0/s…

What do you think is this how the volcanic ash is supposed to look like? The magnification used was 56x

thx,

Philipp

BTW, the ash (?) pictured above was collected near Bregenz in the westernmost part of Austria.

new thread started - yesterday 2-yr anniversary for this blog...

#33 Philipp, I'm no mineralogist. But yes, that could be ash. And if I'm not mistaken, of two different types, the lighter, more silicic. And the darher, more basaltic. But maybe we should have a better resolution to be sure.

steam and a little water 'blurt' at the bottom...

Looks like it's collapsing at the end of the trench......

Today's timelapse video should be extremely interesting to watch. Whoever was in charge of them: please make both close-up and wide view versions!

By the way, I wanted to add that in the last 15-20 minutes it looks like water flow flowing in the lake visible in Vodafone and Thoroslfelli webcams is increasing visibly.

Sorry for writing another post, but if you pay attention on Vodafone cam there are two cars visible in the zoomed view. They help putting the whole thing into scale!

http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…
http://extras.vodafone.is/trailers/fimmvorduhals/mx10-4-235-80/2010/05/…

They are probably Jeeps or similar off roader, which means they are no less big than about 4 meters.

Hi
I have been watching the web cams and this blog for a couple of weeks now the information on it is brilliant.
Alot of steam now coming out how long do you think before the lava becomes visible?

#320: And then there'll be a PLOP! and a full plate.

Given the progress of the steam plumes since this time yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised to see thick steam on the zoomed-in Voda cam on Tuesday.

Now, why do I wanna take a BATH?

Good morning everyone. I envy those of you who get to see the mountain before I do. :-)

I have been looking at the cam and it looks to me like a lot of mush is at the bottom where the mud and slush is. It sure looks different than it did last night and I was wondering if a lot of ice came down with water. At least that is what it looks like to me. Did that happen?

I wish the clouds would get to gettin' and git out of here! Oh well, at least I can see something.

According to news reports today there has been a sharp increase in harmonic tremors coming from the eruption in EyjafjallajÃ¶kull. At the moment scientists are not sure what is going on.

The news in Icelandic.

http://www.mbl.is/mm/frettir/innlent/2010/05/02/gosvirkni_aukist_toluve…

@341 JÃ³n: Translation, please? Also, what does this mean? Could there be another explosion greater than the last one coming soon?

Comparing my Hvolsvelli screens, it's obvious that today's active vent is the same as on the 21st of April, but a different one from April 26th and 27th (which were more to the north).

Just checking in to say how much I'm enjoying this web page. I was on holiday with my family in Iceland last year. We did the Golden Circle, I ran the Reykjavik marathon, and then hired a car driving to the iceberg lagoon, well to the east of the eruption and spending two nights in KirkjubÃ¦jarklaustur. My home is North London UK.

As a child I always dreamed of going to Iceland, and when its currency weakened due to the bsnking crisis I seized the opportunity. The country didn't disappoint.

Prior to going I was a regular on the Iceland Met Office website, and I still regularly check the tremors, watching the earthquake clusters, prior to the current volcanic eruption.

The webcam views are truly wonderful, but the comments from the scientists and locals on here, are superb. I wish I had something to offer the threads in terms of science but I'm an accountant, so I'll now go back to lurking once more.

Keep up the good work

Had to go out...on return,double phooey - vodacam not loading, Thorolfsfelli not as sharp.

As a child I always dreamed of going to Iceland, and when its currency weakened due to the bsnking crisis I seized the opportunity. The country didn't disappoint.

Prior to going I was a regular on the Iceland Met Office website, and I still regularly check the tremors, watching the earthquake clusters, prior to the current volcanic eruption.

Keep up the good work

@342: Google translation here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layou…

@StarBP, This increase in harmonic tremors means that the eruption is possibly more powerful now then it was few days ago. But it might also be sign of more lava flowing from the crater. There is also a question about flood water. But I do not know at the moment.

Is just me or have anyone else seen the smoke from the black area above the cliff? To the left?

Remember several days ago now I mentioned a dark blob on a chunk of ice? Well lo and behold! It is now on the left side of the ice in the middle of the trench. I guess it must be a rock that is sliding across that ice and eventually will fall.

Since I don't have to do anything today, I will be watching more, I hope.

@Jon Frinmann. Just wanted to ask you jon whats your personal feelings as regards the harmonic increase, do you think its something to worry about.

hmm-definite occasional steam from round hole to left of top of exit, also all along that edge of glacier??

Google translation of the link in post 341
Icelandic Meteorological Office measurements indicate that volcanic activity has increased somewhat in recent hours. This got confirmed in service which is more closely monitored function. It is uncertain, however, the significance increased activity may have.

One explanation for the increased activity may be that the lava is placed into the slope and the location is not available. If it comes down from the lava faster and faster out, but the functionality is basically tracking the movement of magma underground. These are only getgÃ¡tur.

Icelandic Meteorological Office measurements show that turmoil has increased considerably. Image / vedur.is
On Vodafone webcam shows white steam Mocha GÃgjÃ¶kul shut down. Top Mac gap indicates the status of lava and they lower rise of melting hot water.

The memorandum of Earth Science Institute University of Iceland and the Icelandic Meteorological Office from last night's match klepragÃgs to continue and does not seem to reduce the power of the eruption. Craters is 200 meters in diameter and approaches the glacier surface. Lava slowly slipping from the crater and is the best energy to melt ice.

Brief new post for today:

http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/05/a_brief_update_on_activity.php

Ok. Let's all go to the new thread. I think we got the hint from Erik. :-)

What are your thoughts on, if Katla then Hekla were to BLOW?! Are these volcanoes always so vicious, or do they occasionally blow, more mildly? If these do blow and they are severe, do the people have a strategy for evacuating Iceland? Will they come here and to Europe? Have they communicated this to any governments as a warning just in case a lot of them have to do so quickly? Is Haiti somehow connected to all of this through the undersea plates? I read that right after the recent Haiti earthquake, Yellowstone starting swarming again with (small 3 point) quakes again - co incidentally? I know our planet is much more connected in smaller to bigger ways that most people don't always notice; plus with all the distractions of everyday life... we tend not to see what may be obvious, many times over, I'm sure.

I now realize that Iceland is known as a LIP, and is not classified as a super volcano (megacaldera). Perhaps this information is incorrect, though, and really Iceland may be an active supercaldera hidden too much by erosion, ice and other such events. For sure, Iceland has experienced massive amounts of erosion through flooding caused by eruptions.

Taken from wikipedia (which was taken from some other source(s) - I'm sure):

Several mechanism's are proposed to explain the association of LIP's with extinction events. The eruption of basaltic LIP's onto the earth's surface releases large volumes of sulfate gas, which forms sulfuric acid in the atmosphere; this absorbs heat and causes substantial cooling (e.g., the Laki eruption in Iceland, 1783). Oceanic LIP's can reduce oxygen in seawater by either direct oxidation reactions with metals in hydrothermal fluids or by causing algal blooms that consume large amounts of oxygen (Kerr, 2005).

With the Gulf leak continuing, should we be concerned with our daily lives, let's say, a year from now, suddenly changing? Is there a connection between (some) eruptions and solar dynamical causes? Perhaps. We shall see.

Well, I have found out that the chain is somewhat like a quarter circle - though really it is right along the two plates where the Atlantic Ridge splits Iceland right through the middle.

This is significant in that this Atlantic Ridge (in of itself) could trigger such an event, seeing how it has all been caused by volcanism to begin with. In that particular spot though it is much more active, so who knows what that could eventually bring? Maybe the entire thing is lifting again as it once did in the distant past, when who knows what was roaming the Earth? Like a sleeping fiery sea serpent waking from beneath the cold North Atlantic sea; whereby the melting ice could be causing this tremendous strain.

Oh, well Erik and Diane, just don't put your heads in the sand, or snow, if something does blow. I think Iceland needs to come out with a good plan of action, if these things are to awaken.

Read the blogs. This may not happen now, but obviously this thing is starting to bob up and down. EyjafjallajÃ¶kull first erupted in March (although not significantly enough to make major headlines) then erupted again in April (more significantly) making major headlines. Now it is dropping again... but who knows for how long, and if it will rise up, yet again, even greater?

If there is a chain reactions, shouldn't the government of Iceland be preparing for a possible major evacuation? Will we not allow them to come (in large quantities) like what happened to the Haitians?

Then again, this thing could go down and lay dormant until 2012. Who knows?

Kudos for the great piece of writing. I am glad I have taken the time to read this.