The VSI scale

Guest post by Tallis Humans have always had some fascination with rankings, some of the most popular videos and articles on the internet have dealt with comparisons and rankings. However, this doesn’t mean that it is just another useless fad, on the contrary, a well thought-out “Top 10 list”  can be very informative. For disasters,…

Making a shield volcano

Looking back to when Fagradalsfjall eruption started, I wrote a post about the Reykjanes Fires, where I speculated about how the eruption could end up being like. I mentioned two main possibilities. One was that it would turn out similar to the eruptions of the Brennisteinsfjöll volcanic system that took place 1000 years ago. The…

Japan: the Fukutuko-Oka-No-Ba eruption

During August 2021, reports came in about an eruption in the ocean south of Japan. The volcano was new to me: Fukuto okanoba. It sounded like something from star wars. It was a friendly explosion, meaning no one was inconvenienced by it. The submarine explosion had produced a tephra raft 60 km long, plus an…

Escape

Who doesn’t dream of escape? Perhaps you have a mind-numbing job, a repressive social environment, or a damp and cold house. It may be an escape in (and from) a computer game, trying to reach the exit while being chased by your real-time friends becoming virtual enemies. Sometimes we need to escape from a dream,…

The Ballad of Ballareldur: Explosions in the night

Over the past weeks, the Fagradalsfjall has settled into in almost predictable routine. There are regular cycles of eruptions and interruptions. During the interruption, the tremor goes quiet. Nothing is shaking or moving on the drum plots. Over several hours, there is a slow build-up of the tremor. Lava begins to return to the crater…

Volcanoes of the North: the fire in the ice

A freezer provides storage. And a deep freezer gives deep storage. You can’t go deeper than an original ice-age glacier. In Greenland, those glaciers are still there, being so tall that the top has remained in deep freeze even though the ice age is a distant memory. In this cryogenic environment, that frozen memory is…

The Great Alaska earthquake of 2021

Alaska can be a shaky place. Earlier this week, at 10:15pm local time on Wednesday, there was an M8.2 earthquake in the region. It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the M8.3 in Chile in 2015. Let’s award the US the gold olympic medal for earthquaking (after all, the Chilean winner was from the…

Volcano on the rocks

People need mementoes. They are small things (normally) with little intrinsic value (often), but which carries a memory which is far more valuable to the owner than the item is in itself. It can be a bit of jewelry, a cup, or a chair, or even a pebble. Or it can be one of many…

Ring dyke formation on Taal?

Lately Taal volcano has been showing unsettling signs of a possible imminent eruption, including high sulphur dioxide emissions, small steam-driven explosions, tremor, and somewhat surprisingly, deflation. I think that this is no conventional magma intrusion but rather a very rare type. First of all I should briefly review what happened in 2020.   The events…

Taal in water

Long time no sea… 😀  For those of you not familiar with me, I am one of the “dragons” that lurk behind the scenes.  My main claim to fame is that “I plot stuff.”  I also on occasion have written filler articles when needed.    This isn’t one of those articles… but since I am a…