Good morning everyone!
I have been sending out this newsletter a couple of times per week since I moved to Substack, but given the events happening in Iceland right now, and given that I’d rather write here than directly on social media, updates may be more frequent over the coming days. Remember that you can manage your settings so that you don’t receive email notifications, but rather notifications in the app on your smartphone, if the emails get to be too much.
At any rate.
Last night I posted about the current eruption status on my Facebook and Instagram accounts. It's a little surreal to go to sleep and then to wake up with everything ostensibly the same as usual, yet knowing that just a few kilometres southwest of us a potentially catastrophic event is gearing up to take place.
The main things that have happened since last night
The main seismic activity has shifted away from the Blue Lagoon and Svartsengi power plants (as per this post) and it looks like the magma corridor (i.e. where the magma is that is waiting to erupt out of the ground) has moved underneath the town of Grindavík, possibly extending into the sea. Grindavík is a small fishing village on the south coast of the Reykjanes peninsula.
The entire town of Grindavík was evacuated last night and is now empty of people. It seems also that all power has gone off, though we have not been offered an explanation why.
Scientists now say that we are looking at a “major event”.
The possibility of an explosive eruption has increased considerably. Explosive eruptions happen e.g. when the molten lava makes contact with water, and they are substantially worse than the other type of eruption, called effusive eruptions. The eruption that occurred in Eyjafjallajökull glacier in 2010 and grounded air traffic across Europe for days was an explosive eruption. These types of eruptions produce far more ash than effusive eruptions, and are generally meaner and nastier. This would be awful for us here in the capital area, since the ash cloud would cover us, at least in certain wind directions.
So yes. Like I said, strange times. We're going about our day as normal, while constantly refreshing the news. What has been amazing, though, is to see the outpouring of love and support among the Icelandic people, especially when it comes to helping the people and animals of Grindavík. There was a big eruption on the Westman Islands in 1973 that began pretty much underneath the town, meaning that the entire island of Heimaey was evacuated. The folks now living in the Westman Islands have been especially generous in offering their support to the displaced people of Grindavík.
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My thoughts are with you...