One more webcam: http://www.vodafone.is/eldgos/en
Might take a short while for first image to appear.

I smelled something similar around midnight Thursday/Friday. A touch of "burnt" with a dollop of "sulphurous" - very faint, but definitely noticeable. It's ten years since I was in Iceland: I didn't think I'd be sniffing the place before seeing it again! I was strongly reminded of Apollo astronauts' opinions regarding the smell of moondust.

As to the ash-fall, here (Central Scotland) it's very obvious on car bodywork. Similarly-sized small grains which are really sharp and "edgy". Mostly black/dark grey, but there are quartzy bits within. A careful hosing of the old jalopy will occur later.

What has surprised me is the air quality. It's poor: there's clearly lots of dust still up there, but the sunsets/rises are, as Stu says, just "normal".

Andy

Here in Switzerland, all day long, you get the impression that above in the sky all is a bit redish instead of white or grayish (between the blue).
And something is clearly missing over the head and in the ears..., oh no plane in the air since midnight.

This friggin volcano is delaying my son's return from his year-long deployment in Afghanistan. It took him 8 days to get from his FOB to Kuwait, and he has been grounded there for the better part of a week now waiting to make the last legs home. He has been wearing the same BDUs since April 2...I imagine he's going to smell worse than the volcano by the time he finally gets home!

Oh, that SUCKS, Jonathan!!! Man. Can't they straggle him home through an eastern route, or does he have to go with his unit? (He might be able to hop through Diego Garcia-->Kadena-->Travis is what I was thinking.)

Only bright spot is that I hear from my stepson that Kuwait has some clubs & decent restaurants these days, so hopefully he's getting some chillax time as he waits.

ditto in northern France

If all else fails, there's always the old fashioned transatlantic crossing method: ships.


Are there no large airports in North Africa that can help with traffic?

South West (Toulouse etc...) of France and Spain are still out of trouble to handle trafic, no needs to get tp North Africa. Plane come from Madrid over my place as usual.

Watching the volcano webcam... night there now, obviously, so pitch black, but is that *lightning* flashing within the plume?

http://eldgos.mila.is/eyjafjallajokull-fra-valahnjuk

Sorry to hear about your son's delayed return home Jonathan, you must all feel mad as hell about that.

Somehow that made me think of the movie "Casablanca" - the only safe way out of Europe at the time being through North Africa!

I received word that my son was catching a flight out of Portugal today. I'm anxiously awaiting word of his arrival back in the US!!

Great news, man! Is he coming out of Lajes Field in the Azores? That's pretty far south of the Portuguese mainland, IIRC.

Something else I've been wondering, can't find an answer anywhere:

Is there some technical reason jets can't just fly at a lower altitude then the ash cloud? It has something to do with 'cruise altitude' and engines being less fuel efficient in a denser atmosphere, right?

Yeah, low-alt flying eats a LOT of fuel; can't go nearly as fast, either, since you're dealing with much denser air.

Also, it's a much rougher ride for the same reason, which is not only uncomfortable for passengers but not good for the aircraft structurally. There are also potential noise-abatement issues over populated areas; the engines have to be on a higher throttle setting to maintain airspeed.

Balloons and dirigibles would be mostly unaffected though right? Or propeller planes....

Weird how I'm thinking of all these alternate modes of transport; it's funny how something as tiny as a dust particle can grind an entire continent to a halt, when a hundred years ago most people wouldn't have noticed this at all!
All our amazing technology still pales to nature's every whim, whether on Earth, in it's skies, or beyond

I'd better stop, I'm getting scarily close to being poetic here!

Actually, most airliner-sized prop planes use turboprop engines, meaning that they're driven by small jet engines, so the ash ingestion problem for engine compressor blades still would apply. However, they fly at lower altitudes (possibly below the most concentrated areas of ash) & they're slower, of course, so the leading edges of the wings wouldn't be eroded as much. They might well tolerate these conditions better than "real" jets.

Yeah, it is funny how new technologies always encounter new challenges. 150 years ago, the worst solar storms could only mess up telegraphs; today, they can royally screw up not only a variety of vital satellite-based services, but also take out power grids!

I wonder why they can't fly out from LHR at, say 8,000, get west of Ireland then accelerate up to M.81 and FL350 from there. I understand the need for safety first, but it does seem a little bit like they've thrown their hands up and said "Ok - Volcano - you win" rather than trying every possible route in and out in the mean time.

I'm sure that's possible to do within the limits of fuel consumption rates for many models of aircraft, Doug. Think that the blanket ban is an abundance of caution in the name of safety, though. The UK civil aviation authorities apparently don't want to take a chance that even one plane will get itself into a dangerous situation be it from ash ingestion or trying to hop the Atlantic with a minimal fuel reserve.

As a pilot friend of mine once told me, the average 747 flight taking off from London to New York has NEARLY enough fuel..... to get half way back

Like I said...an abundance of caution!

As you might have guessed, I got a war story for this, though. There I was, flying to Norfolk, VA from Rota, Spain aboard a C-141 in the mid-90s. We were about halfway across the pond, and I was up in the cockpit trying to get at least one of the plane's two HF radios working; damn things both decided to quit at once, and the -141 didn't have any sort of SATCOM at the time, so we were pretty much cut off from the world.

All of a sudden, the red "cabin pressure" light came on, and both of the pilots immediately put on their O2 masks; according to the gauge, we were losing pressure pretty rapidly. We were @ FL360 or so, and they immediately began to descend to 10,000 ft. so that the rest of us could keep breathing. The aircraft commander told me to grab the loadmaster & try to find & plug the leak, since we didn't have enough fuel to reach North America or turn back to Europe at that point if we had to stay below FL010!

So, I went downstairs & told the loadmaster what was going on. He said he'd felt a pop near the restroom, so we checked there first. As soon as we opened the door, we felt a breeze; the toilet tank seal had apparently popped off, and all our air was blasting out through the commode! (It was very fortunate that nobody happened to be sitting on it when this happened; that would have left one hell of a mark!) So, we grabbed some blankets & pillows & stuffed them into the john, then poured a bunch of water over it all. The water eventually froze somewhere down in the mess & finally stopped the leak; we climbed back up to cruise altitude & made it to Norfolk. (I even fixed the radios!)

So, yeah: I fully support abundant caution when it comes to aviation. You never know what's gonna happen at decidedly inconvenient times!

That reminds me of the Marx Brothers line in "Monkey Business" - something along the lines of, "We fly all the way across the Atlantic and we are just about to land when, maybe one foot from the runway, when what do you know? We run out of gas, so we have to go back."

FYI, my son made it back home to Ft. Bragg last night! I haven't had the chance to debrief him on his final flight path and waypoints. The important thing is that the plane made it to Bragg with him on board!

That's FL100.

Hey, you're ruining the story, Tesh!

(You're right!)

Not ruined Nicolas, it's a nice one! I flew on Transall C160 so didn't have this kind of troubles (not talking about John's) since FL never get THAT high.
I went to Berlin at the time of THE WALL (I remember very well seing it from the sky while landing) and the corridor was so narrow that volcanoes ashes would have been a BIG problem.

Some pretty impressive volcano eruption pix in this person's flickr photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredrikholm/s...57623722362673/
("Evacuation" with the horses is really impressive)

Today's APOD is a pretty impressive pic of the volcano.

Lightning in the ash column:
http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/perm/ice...0100416-en.html

Amazing photos.

Wow. Monsters from the Id

Yeah, it does remind me of Doom!

Or am I thinking of the wrong Doom?

I was thinking of the Krill monster in "Forbidden Planet."

I remember that phrase from a science fiction movie, late 1950's or early 1060's. I don't remember the movie title but it featured "Robbie the Robot."

EDIT
Right Jonathan It was called "Forbidden Planet"? I don't remember the name Krill, but you are undoubtedly correct.

To be an utter purist, wasn't the extinct alien species called the "Krell"?

(Your basic alien krill would have to be pretty freakin' big to be scary, after all... )

Oh, right. I was thinking of Forbidden Planet of the Sea Monkeys.

A hundred foot tall crustacean would scare me!


Unless it was in a salad.

This is an absolutely amazing video that shows shockwaves in the ash cloud:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BicT13ecUbc

Wow! Thanks, Bjorn! This is truly impressive!
I just did my part in helping it go viral.

The shockwaves are actually made visible in the water vapor clouds, but wow! That has got to be some of the most spectacular volcano footage I've ever seen.

Well, the UK is getting back into the skies, just seen my first contrail in 6 days!

Surely Doug you mean UK airspace is open for businesss again, by domestic and foreign airlines.......

Stu: Very sorry to hear of another disaster (man made) in Cumbria. Hope you are well.

Floyd

Thanks Floyd, yeah, it's been a ghastly, very surreal day. I'm many miles away from where the shootings were today, but at one point there was a rumour going around that the police had chased the gunman in his car through Kendal. Thankfully that turned out not to be true. But the shootings were in the area where I used to live before coming down here, so it's been horrible seeing many of the towns, villages and streets I know so very well caught up in this horrific incident and all over the news programmes. 12 people dead, many more injured... terrible.

I'm just hearing about this now... terrible, terrible news. The first thing it reminded me of was the awful Dunblane tragedy. I remember listening to the events of that day unfolding over the radio, very vividly indeed.

Tragic to hear this, Stu. Glad you're okay, and best wishes for your friends & family in the region.

Cumbria's been hit again: this time by a tremor:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12056634

Let us know if you're okay, Stu.

Well - he's tweeting about it

We're getting drowned over here in LA - something like 210mm ( 8.25 inches ) of rain in the last 4-5 days. Most of it in the last 45 hrs.

Earthquakes in England. Endless rain in LA... What's wrong with this picture?

All's well here Almost dead on 11pm the building shook with a real jolt, then another smaller one. I initially wondered if it was just another truck or lorry thundering up the road, because we get a dozen or so 'tremors' from those every day, but the vibrations continued for another ten, twenty seconds maybe, and it just felt... different, like a kind of interior rumble, very odd. Anyway, within moments people from all over Cumbria were Tweeting about it, and it turns out the tremor was mag 3.6, centred on Coniston. No damage reports, and I'm happy to confirm that although our christmas tree swayed a lottle the dalek and Tenth Doctor perched near the top stayed safely in place...

Quite an exciting day - lunar eclipse this morning, tremor this evening!

Glad you're okay, Stu. It's been a busy week or more over there, seemingly!

Meteo-nurd factoid. Per year per sq Km.... the UK has more tornadoes than the USA.

Always have to remind people that despite the fact that I am originally from Kansas, I have only seen one tornado in my entire life.

Somewhere there is a late-night talk radio host with a gravelly sounding voice implying a connection