The Land of Fire and Ice is living up to its name

Awesome links. Thanks

My mother back in Germany reports that she's never seen the moon so red.

does anyone remember how long Mount St Helens continued erupting?

Whoa! I'd not be as near as some of those people to that!! But it must be awesome (literally) to see it up close.

Humans propose...nature disposes.

It is a chaos in Europe. People are stuck in airports if they have no visa for the country, charter travelers have to be picked up by busses in south Europe to be brought back, trains are full, you can hardly get a rented car, no air mail, no air cargo, no fresh fruit, people having to take cabs from everywhere to everywhere. The longest trip I have heard about so far was Copenhagen - Madrid (around 4000 dollars).
People can´t get to weddings, back to work,.
This mess is going to cost billions.
Queen of Denmark was celebrating her 70th birthday. Several could not come, the same for the funeral of the Polish President, many can´t come. Angela Merkel came from USA and is now stuck in Rome.


BRITAIN: All airspace closed until at least 0600GMT Sunday (2 a.m. EDT Saturday). British Airways canceling all short-haul flights to and from London airports Sunday.

FRANCE: Paris airports and about two dozen others in northern France will remain closed until at least Monday morning.

GERMANY: All airspace closed until at least 0000GMT Sunday.

SWITZERLAND: Swiss air space remains closed until 1800GMT Saturday.

AUSTRIA: All airspace closed until at least 0000 GMT Sunday, but higher airspace (above 7,500 meters) will be gradually reopened beginning 1800 GMT Saturday.

BELGIUM: Brussels Airlines canceled all flights until noon Monday. Belgian airspace closure until at least 1800GMT Saturday.

HOLLAND: All airspace closed until further notice.
Italy: Airspace in northern Italy closed until 1800GMT Saturday.

SPAIN: Iberia canceled all of its European flights - except those linking Spain with Portugal, south Italy, Greece and Istanbul - until further notice.

NORDICS: All airspace in Sweden and Finland closed until further notice; airspace in Denmark and Baltics closed till at least 0000 GMT. Only airspace in Norway's far north is open. Scandinavian airline operator SAS AB said it has cancelled all flights to and from Denmark, Sweden and Norway for both Saturday and Sunday, except for some domestic flights in northern Norway.

CZECH REPUBLIC: All air space will remain closed at least till Sunday noon.

CROATIA: International airports in the capital of Zagreb and in Osijek, in the east, and those in the western parts of the country were all closed.

SLOVENIA: International airports in Maribor and Portoroz closed.

SERBIA: The country has closed a small strip of its airspace in the north.

BELARUS: All flights banned until at least 1300GMT. At the Minsk National Airport most flights to Europe have been cancelled.

UKRAINE: Kiev's Borispol airport had cancelled all flights until at least 1300GMT.

RUSSIA: About 185 flights from Russian airports are delayed or have been cancelled.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266760/Volcanic-ash-cloud-100-000-Britons-stranded-Europe-air-traffic-chiefs-extend-lockdown-7am.html#ixzz0lNga1rTS

Mrs. Merkel left Rome, apparently -
from the new york times, "Mrs. Merkel had to spend Friday night in Lisbon after returning from the United States. She managed to make it to Rome on Saturday and was expected to continue her journey by bus after spending the night in northern Italy, according to The Associated Press."

This seems a horrendous mess..

Here's a map showing ash density and flight cancellations.



source

Yes, and then they had a flat tire.... This journey of Merkel is something else.

Cleese takes half-day cab ride for $5,100

OSLO " British actor John Cleese of Monty Python fame opted for a daylong cab ride halfway across Europe after the dust plume from an Icelandic volcano left him stranded.

Cleese paid $5,100 for a Mercedes taxi Friday from the Norwegian capital, Oslo, to Brussels, said Kjetil Kristoffersen, managing director of Publicom, his agent in Norway. Cleese was in Oslo to appear on the talk show Skavlan.

"When the plane did not go, we tried to book tickets on the train, but there was no possibility in the whole world," Kristoffersen said.

The 932-mile trip from Oslo to Brussels takes about 15 hours by car and passes through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

That's nature for you.

What a great photo! Is that the volcano that erupted in Chile?

Video:


http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/video-of-volcano-spewing-more-ash/?src=twt&twt=nytimes

That is a beautiful picture JPB, where did you get it?

The picture is from the Huffington Post. It was linked to a blog on the Iceland volcano, but it also comes up in a snopes (is this real?) discussion about Chili in 2009, so I'm not sure which it is. I'm guessing snopes has it right.

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2010-04-17-ejafjalla16apr20105.jpg
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/chaiten.asp

Except... that exact picture isn't in the snopes link from 2009 and it's dated 4/17/10. The snopes writeup indicates that such events are possible. This picture may well be from Iceland.

If you look at the pictures of the earthquake from Chile in 2008, they will be similar to your photo, JPB--they show both lightning and the eruption. That's a somewhat rare event--it's called a "dirty thunderstorm".

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/photogalleries/volcano-photos/

I don't think the volcano in Iceland is producing lightning. It's just creating a tremendous amount of ash and smoke.

Some of these photos do show lightning with the volcano in Iceland.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/photographing-icelands-fiery-volcano/?hpw

Iceland now has Weapon of Mass Disruption.

HAHA!