The Volcano at Grindavik

The volcano at Grindavik was making news as we arrived in December, again in January, once more on 8 February and most recently on March 16. On all occasions one or more longitudinal fissures opened and after a brief flare were spitting and drooling lava for not even a couple of days each time, with the press reporting rising ground levels in the weeks before each eruption. It would not surprise anyone if that process repeats in the coming months. The March eruption was more powerful, apparently and is still going, albeit a bit subdued, on Wednesday 20th, and continued for a month or so. This process seems to be repeating and now (end July) they are predicting another outflow in the next few weeks. So far the defences of Grindavik are holding!

That said, there were, or are 3 web-cams trained on the vents which made for great slow-TV! Mesmerizing really. To watch the screen go from black night to omg, that's a volcano (although small) and again, watching as the lava flow gradually edged it way ever so slowly towards a couple of house which, of course, ended up engulfed in flames.

Siena read about it in Canberra before I woke on Sunday and alerted me to the January 14 eruption. I immediately dragged myself out of a warm bed and up the hill a couple of hundred meters to Hallgrimskirkja, the Reykjavik Cathedral, and since it was after 10am I got a ticket to go up the bell tower where they have a viewing platform. Just the best 360 deg view. The pics below, all taken from the church tower, show what we could see of the eruption, about 50 km south of here and about 10 km from the road to Reykjavik international airport at Keflavik (...vik on a name refers to a bay).

Right this moment there is nothing to look at on the live streams, but if you hear of the Grindavik volcano erupting again you'll likely to be able to get up close and personal by following your nose from https://www.mbl.is/promos/gosid-i-beinni/ although you may have to translate the site (google is Ok with Icelandic but often not perfect!)