Informations on earthquakes and tremors in the Vatnajökull area

Just a quick addition to yesterday: You can find information on the latest earthquakes here, and for the latest view of the tremors click here - from there, click on the little red and yellow square sitting on Vatnajökull. And, while we´re at it - here the webcam at Jökulsárlón, which used to be all nice and white and blue, now covered in ash!!

For my 1- year anniversary of stay in Iceland, and the End of the World: A new volcanic eruption!

After 7 years of rest, Grimsvötn Volcano, under the Vatnajökull icecap in South East Iceland, has started an eruption just minutes before the predicted Rapture. So far there have been no reports of numerous believers being swept up into the sky in Iceland, but the ash certainly has gone a long way up - the plume is currently 20km high, and the question remains how "serious" the eruption will be. Parts of the main highway around the island have been closed just south of Vatnajökull, as experts expect that 10 to 12 hours after the onset of the eruption, a so-called Jökulhlaup will take place - a glacial flood triggered by the melting of the glacier by the erupting lava. It appears that the ash produced by the Grimsvötn is coarser than what was produced by Eyjafjallajökull last year (see last year´s posts on this blog). The size of the ash particles is crucial in influencing its behaviour, and in particular, its potential of being transported over long distances and extended areas: In general, the finer the ash, the further it can travel before it falls onto the ground, thus no major air-traffic chaos is predicted yet.
Here a few first pictures from the eruption (including the picture I used at the beginning of this post), probably by tomorrow the news will be flooded with more images. Also, it looks like Míla, who was hosting the webcams for Eyjafjallajökull last year, are currently setting up two new webcams (here and here), although right now (23:17 icelandic time) they don´t appear to work yet.
But that´s is for now - time to go pack the tent, a few sampling bottles, and most of all the camera, for the trip out East to go check it all out tomorrow :)