Eyjafjallajokull

The eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano on Iceland just under a week ago is having a huge economic impact. The last time it erupted, back in 1821, there’s a good chance that nobody outside of Iceland gave a damn.

It started off as something fun to see, almost like a drive-in movie.

There was the potential flood problem; heat from the volcano would melt the glacier on the mountain faster than you can say Al Gore.

In this case, the ice melt exacerbated the generation of ash and the volcano has been spewing tons of ash along with smoke and steam into the atmosphere.

This huge ash cloud drifted south and east, bringing a halt to all air traffic in the UK and Europe.

 

It may be premature, but today it appears that the volcano is changing over to more lava flow and less ash and smoke.

Test flights have been made and some airports are reopening , but billions of dollars have been lost and literally thousands of potential passengers have had their plans disrupted. Several heads-of-state who would otherwise have attended the funeral of the president of Poland were unable to fly in due to the ash, Fed-Ex and UPS cancelled several days of European operations, etc.

Hopefully, the worst is over. If there is a silver lining here, it is hard to see; just like reporters on the scene claim you can’t see anything at all when inside the ash cloud.

Still, it does look pretty from a distance, and this last picture – of the volcano and the aurora borealis is fascinating. I’ve never seen (with the exception of a wisp of steam from Mt. St. Helens and the mud pots and geysers at Yellowstone) an active volcano or the aurora.