It rains a lot in British Columbia. Here is where the Pacific Ocean dumps its excess moisture. The mountains are covered with trees; the lichen-covered branches drip in the seemingly perpetual rain or drizzle. The summers are mild and dry but don’t last long enough. The everlasting days soon end, and the autumn rains and…
In her 1948 novel “Trollkarlens hatt” (Finn Family Moomintroll), Finnish author Tove Jansson describes how on the first day of spring Moomintroll and his friends discover a large, black hat and bring it home without knowing that it is the Magician’s lost hat and that anything that stays in the hat too long will be…
I have lately read a lot of comments about Iceland being boring and calm. In reality nothing could be more wrong, Iceland is brimming with activity. So, let us take a quick look at some interesting volcanoes before we go to the namesake of this article. Volcanic activity in general If we start in the…
In hindsight, continental drift should have been obvious. That the Earth moves up and down had been known for centuries, shown by the layered beaches of Sweden, the seashells of the Himalayas, or the sinking harbours of the Med. The drowned and resurfaced Pillars of Pozzuoli became famous as the frontipiece of Charles Lyell’s opus…
Welcome to The Weekly Update! This week’s roundup follows last week’s fairly quiet period with another fairly quiet period with only 12 or so volcanoes producing enough of an ash cloud to be considered worthy of a VAAC report. Due to work commitments this week, the report runs from the 21st of April to the…
Welcome to a double edition of the Weekly Update. Following last weeks “incident”, where my cat Jeff somehow contrived to destroy my modem, this week we are covering two weeks worth of VAAC reports, so without too much preamble we will plow ahead. A slight change to how I have chosen to display the images this…
The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen is situated north of Iceland. It might be the only place on earth where no one yet has bothered to find anything valuable. Except for a short stint in the early twentieth century when Norwegian trappers hunted polar bears and blue fox. Jan Mayen services as a combined polar…
Welcome to a rather later than usual Friday update. A rather unfortunate collection of unrelated events meant I did not have an opportunity to sit and write this until half past eight on Saturday evening. But my tardiness allowed the volcano gods some extra time to put on a show and they obliged with increased…
Welcome the #7 of our weekly eruptions report. This week appears to have been a fairly quiet one according to the VAAC reports with fewer eruptions reported than previous weeks. Map showing the areas of operation of the various VAAC bodies. Continuing the recent trend, London, Toulouse, Anchorage, Montreal and Wellington all have no reports in their respective…
Welcome to another Friday update. I thought I would start with a brief look at the reports that get filed around the world and how to interpret them and translate them into something that can be easily read and understood. These reports can look quite daunting when you first look at them, but these are…