The mountain got its name in 1911 when students of the local university, named New Mexico School of Mines, climbed up the hill and painted a 50 meter tall letter ‘M’ near the summit. Other Mines schools had their letter, so why not Socorro? And of course it had to be bigger than the other…
Foreword Like minds and all, both me and Albert set out to write an update article unbeknownst to each other. I guess that Albert has not yet fully come to grips with me returning back to “life”. But, this is a good thing for you as a reader, you get twice the fun from two…
Volcanoes rarely follow human timescale and human planning. This time it is Þorbjörn that decided to ruin things just after Albert had published a truly nice read about Santa Maria. Þorbjörn better do as told below, otherwise Albert will have words with the volcano in question for ruining his article scheduling. Background In the…
I love large caldera volcanoes. The first reason is that they are always very beautiful, especially if they have lakes in them. The second reason is that most of them are of a class of volcanoes that leave their pointier cousins far behind. Size matters after all. At one end of the beauty spectrum, you…
Geological time is interesting, because even the geological now is decades long, if not centuries. The current geological episode at Reykjanes didn’t start with Fagrafjall (it is no longer a valley, so let us drop the “dal” out of Fagradalsfjall shall we). Nor did it start with the large and very noisy intrusion over at…
Think of one thing that has interested you for as long as you can remember, or at least for so long the level of factual knowledge you have of it is almost ridiculously vast. That one thing that always brightens up your day when you hear or read something about it, no matter how busy…
I am writing this the day before the already failed COP26 meeting in Glasgow. Failed in the respect that neither the leaders of China, nor Russia, will partake. Failed also in the respect that the leaders of Japan, Australia and Brazil are travelling there hellbent on stopping or slowing down any progress. Failed in the…
Late in 2020, an M6.4 earthquake struck the town of Petrinja in Croatia. It caused extensive damage in the town and in nearby villages, and 7 people died. Even so, the impact was more limited than it might have been because houses here tend to be well build. It came as a surprise: powerful earthquakes…
There is a bit of California here. The fault equals the length of the San Andreas, its shape, its movement, and its earthquakes. Even the ends are alike: where the San Andreas has formed the Salton Sea, its counterpart has embraced the Marmara Sea. Both are places where the crust is being pulled part, and…
If you are now wondering why you never heard of this, this was a prediction, not an event. The volcano decided otherwise 38 per cent of all eruptions in Iceland come from Grimsvötn. It is an amazing number: this hidden volcano, invisible and unreachable to all but the most hardy explorer, is among the most…