Rumblings from another Icelandic volcano

[GloriaSmud]

and it's a big 'un!
This time at Bárðarbunga, with over 200 earthquakes recorded so far and last night, the Icelandic Met Office raised the aviation colour code to yellow to reflect the unrest that's going on.

Whoop whoop! Gloria and OYBBK pooling their knowledge on one thread!

You two are fab!

From what I remember, Mr Walsh got impatient with the flight ban and went up in one of his planes with just the crew, and flew towards/through part of the ash cloud (think it was off the west coast of Ireland or Northern Ireland and then up towards Iceland direction-wise.) When they found nothing happened with the engines during the flight and the engines were examined afterwards and there wasn't any evidence of ash/damage, airlines gradually went back to flying through the area. (I can't remember the exact timeline but I think when he got 'a bit cross' and went on the flight, the eruption was more or less over anyway, so possibly wasn't much ash about anyway.)

There's an excellent interview here with a Volcanologist from the Open University about Bárðarbunga. It mentions that the rules about flying where there's volcanic ash are a bit more relaxed now than they were 3-4 years ago.

And another update to the blog here.

And the BBC have a report on it here.

The rumbling goes on and reading the blogs, I don't think anyone (perhaps apart from those working at the Icelandic Met Office) know what's going on! They seem to agree that the longer the earthquakes go on, the bigger the eruption (whatever form that takes) will be at the end ~ so this could go on for weeks at this rate! In the meantime, another webcam has been set up here (I find it takes a little while to load) to help with volcano-watching.

The media are beginning to report on this as well now so with both the Daily Mail and Express reporting on it, we're now offically doomed!

And this goes on. They started evacuating these areas yesterday, in case of a glacial flood/ volcanic eruption.

Someone on the volcano cafe blog just posted this up to the minute site for seeing where earthquakes are. You can tilt and hover over the dots and everything. All good fun to have a play with!

Gloria & OYBBK*

Love the blog - great sense of humor:

" I do not do crystal balls. I leave crystal balling to people that wears tinfoil hats."

Please can it not happen in mid September when we go on hols with DS & DIL - am so looking forward to it.

I've just not had chance to come back and have a proper look - sorry. These holidays are turning out to be quite a busy old lark.

Wonder if Myvatn is in the evacuation area, it's the most populous habitation in that part of iceland. The rest is really rather empty.

If it waits til September most of the tourists will be out of that region.

It does look like it skims lake myvatn. This time last year almost we were driving round it! Timed that well.

OYBBK ~ was that really a year ago?! Where has the time gone!
I think the view was that as there are so many tourists in the area at the moment, it was best to evacuate now rather than wait 'til something happened and finding they didn't have time to evacuate them all.

There's a nice new Bárðarbunga and Dyngjujökull section on the IMO website, giving a round-up of the last few days.

I can't believe it was a year ago either wish I was there now!

Cool update to volcano cafe. It seems that Bárðarbunga and Grimsvötn might have a baby. Aaahhhhhh.

A baby Bárðarbvötn or Grimsbunga! If that's what the feisty parents are like, can you imagine what it's going to be like when their offspring reach the 'terrible twos' or as a teenager!

I think it should be Grimsbunga! (Doesn't need any fancy letters that way!)

We may have to start a POAS thread for the new potential parents.

I like Grimsbunga! And pregnancy tests for volcanoes ~ there's a sentence I never thought I'd write!

Well depending on which blog you read, the caldera at Bárðarbunga is straining at the edges and either rising or falling! There are some quite big EQ's happening every now and then ~ one gets the feeling that if something occurs at Bárðarbunga it's going to be big (especially the longer the EQ's go on with no eruption) and could make Eyjafjallajökull look like a small sneeze in comparison.

Thanks, ladies. Although I'm not taking to the air, it's still interesting to keep an eye on this....

This has really kicked off this morning and looks like an eruption might be imminent/has started. The Aviation colour code has just been raised to 'Red.'
And all the webcams seem to be down ~ aaaaaahhhhh!

Does anyone understand the various charts that are available?

This one seems reasonably clear, the one at the bottom I think shows the number of quakes in the area and their magnitude.

This one I have no real idea. Looks pretty but what does it mean? Km is depth I think, Latitude is location but where is the volcano in terms of latitude, at -17?

Quake of 4.5 is the highest so far today but does a higher magnitude mean it is more likely to erupt or are lots of smaller quakes a sign?

Anyone able to do a brief guide to Volcano Watching?

Report (translated using Google translate) confirms small eruption has started here

Flightradar24 shows flights are already being diverted.

Watch live - though Cam3 at the moment appears to be offline.

Oh no, not again . . . DH is due in Iceland next week, on his way home from Greenland. At least he won't know about this yet (on an expedition).

We had problems last time, getting him to Geneva, but managed to use Eurostar for the first part of his journey.

(I hope I'm getting some of the following right!) -17 is Bárðarbunga and the eruption seems to be under the Dyngjujökull glacier in the northern bit of the Vatnajökull glacier (possibly where the majority of the earthquakes were showing up on the website?)
It all seems to be under the ice at the moment. The first indication that something's happened will probably be a glacial flood (both river levels and conductivity rising caused by melting ice ~ which is why the authorities evacuated a vast area to the north several days ago.)

One of the webcams is back and showing 'something' ~ steam/ash/smoke rising? It's certainly not as clear as on previous days.

Cam 3 does look interesting!! If it's similar to how it was an hour ago it's probably not cloud.

It looks like ash to me and DH....