A spatter cone continues to grow in the northernmost crater in Eyjafjallajökull glacier in south Iceland and the lava keeps flowing to the north towards the Gígjökull glacial tongue, according to information from Björn Oddsson, a geologist at the University of Iceland Institute of Earth Science, who flew over the eruption site in a Coast Guard airplane yesterday.
The eruption in Eyjafjallajökull. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
The crew couldn’t see much of the eruption but could monitor its development on the airplane’s radar. The eruption seems similar as in the past days, although it is not nearly as forceful as it was in the first days, Morgunbladid reports.
The ash being emitted is much coarser than it was during the first days of the eruption. The fine particles that caused the most disturbances in the upper atmosphere, and thus disrupted flights, have disappeared.
Oddsson was on a team of scientists who traveled up to Eyjafjallajökull on Wednesday to collect samples from the ash which is currently being emitted from the crater.
The geologists said they walked into a rain of volcanic debris. “We didn’t go so far that we were at risk of being hit by boulders, only smaller rocks and grains. You could feel them hit your shoulder.”
For the most part, domestic and international flight schedules in Iceland returned to normal yesterday after the airports in Reykjavík and Keflavík reopened. “It is running like a well-oiled machine,” commented Hjördís Gudmundsdóttir, information office at ISAVIA.
It doesn’t appear as if the ash from Eyjafjallajökull will disrupt flights in the coming days. Yet there is nothing to indicate that the eruption is coming to an end; magma flow and the size of the volcanic cloud is about the same as it has been in the past days, ruv.is reports.
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