Thursday, April 15, 2010

Gosið... Taka II

The small eruptions in Fimmvörðuháls of March 21st and March 31st resulted from the lava coming out sideway and ending up in a zone without much ice.


The new eruption is considered to be 20 to 30 times more powerful than those of Fimmvörðuháls. This time the lava is coming up straight to reach the ice cap of Eyjafjallajökull. As a result, the regions North and South of the glacier/eruption suffered "hlaup" and "flóð": jökulhlaup and floods


The authorities have asked for the Þjóðvegur 1 (road n°1) to be cut in several locations over Markarfljót, a glacial river fed from the melting ices of the neighboring glaciers, in order to save the new bridge from destruction.



This little country of some 300.000 inhabitants is causing some major disruptions (and lost of money) to the rest of Europe.
The cloud of ashes moving west has caused the cancellation of all flights in the UK as well as the republic of Ireland and Norway.
The airspace of Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Belgium and Netherlands are parcially closed but will be totally closed as the cloud moves west.

For people who are incredulous about the cloud of ashes being a problem, I suggest watching the video taken by a friend during our watch on the eruption site on April 1st.




One can see the ashes "stream" coming out from the volcano at 02:54 and then the ashes coming down on the bonnet of the car at 03:20... And this was a tiny eruption, the new one being 20-30 times bigger.

As a reminder, the last eruption of Eyjafjallajökull dates back from 1821 and lasted 2 years... If it is to last for such a long period of time, this could have bad effects on the economic of the euro zone.

No comments: