Re: new eruption Wednesday brings glacial flooding & evacuations
Posted by CypressTX on 4/14/2010, 8:16 am
http://www.ruv.is/ has good coverage of this - I have my Google Chrome browser set to automatically translate Icelandic to English - it's not perfect, but lets me read the stories with some understanding anyway.

http://iceland.vefur.is/ has great info also, one article on this site: http://iceland.vefur.is/iceland_nature/Glaciers_in_Iceland/vatnajokull.htm says the following about a 1996 eruption under Vatnajokull Glacier:

"At 7:20am on the fifth of November, the meltwater burst vertically from two kilometers above the tongue of the glacier. By four that afternoon, the jokulhlaup was fully realized. A mixture of sediment, meltwater, and ice moved at ten kilometers per hour from the full twenty-kilometer width of the glacier's terminus across Skeidararsandur, forming standing waves three and four meters high. The total flow peaked at over fifty thousand cubic meters per second in the five outwash channels, making it briefly the second largest river of the world. The flood obliterated a 376-meter-long bridge, the majority of a second bridge nine hundred meters in length, twelve kilometers of roadway, twenty-three power-line towers, and causing fourteen million United States dollars in damage while adding seven square kilometers to the area of Iceland. Thankfully, there were no fatalities or injuries, and the flood did not reach any nearby settlements."

incredible...
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Eruption started at Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland - JAC, 3/21/2010, 8:09 am
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