Interesting Facts about Iceland's Volcano

Iceland's volcano: 9 Interesting facts

As the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull continues to cause travel chaos around the world, a look at some of the weirder stories to come out of the disaster

The closure of the European flightzone thanks to a volcanic eruption in Iceland looks set to continue well into this week, leaving vast numbers of travellers stranded around the world. But beyond the packed airport halls and grounded planes, the eruption has affected the world in many unusual ways. Here, a list of strange facts surrounding the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull:

The volcano looks like Edvard Munch's "The Scream"
Radar images of the volcano's crater appear to resemble a "nightmarish face...reminiscent of Edvard Munch's painting The Scream," reports Claire Bates in the Daily Mail. "Coincidentally it is thought that the masterpiece was inspired by the blood red skies caused by the powerful volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883."

It forced a Monty Python star to take a $5,000 cab ride
John Cleese, of the classic Monty Python's Flying Circus comedy troupe, paid $5,100 for a taxi ride from Oslo in Norway to Brussels in Belgium. Known for his absurdist humor, notes Clive Irving at the Daily Beast, Cleese is "the perfect posterboy for the present situation."

Norway is being governed via iPad
Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister of Norway, is stuck in New York. But he has reportedly been running the country quite effectively from 4,000 miles away with his new Apple iPad. "It's official," says Stevie Smith at theTech Herald. Apple's latest toy is "capable of running the world."

The eruption destroyed millions of flowers — in Kenya
Floral exports make up 20 percent of the Kenya's economy — and they have been completely shut down by Europe's flight ban. The head of the Kenya Flower Council told the BBC that local growers have been forced to destroy 3,000 tons of flowers since last week with devastating effects on the local economy.

Just try buying a kumquat in Frankfurt
Like Europe's imported flowers, many of its exotic fruits and vegetables are flown in from Africa and the Middle East. With so many planes grounded, food suppliers are warning of shortages. "We will lack beans and chillies from Egypt and fresh herbs from Israel," says wholesaler Peter Grundhoefer to Reuters. And "exotic fruits like mango, kumquats and physalis" will start becoming scarce in the next day or two.

Twitter has become an emergency travel service
Stranded travellers are using Twitter to hitch rides across Europe, reports Ben Fenton in the Financial Times. By posting messages with searchable hash tags such as #getmehome or #stranded, Tweeple have been able locate "potential lift sharers and others in the same boat (or train, or car)." A boat service from France to the U.K. was also organized using the social networking tool.      

Airlines are asking for a "volcano bailout"
While the EU was recently forced to write a check to save Greece's economy, it could be forced to dig deep in its pockets for the airline industry, too. Several carriers, including British Airways, have asked for financial compensation. The bill could prove to be steep: at the same time BA is losing $30 million each day and Air France-KLM around $40 million, volcanologists are warning that eruption could go on for months.

The sports world is reeling
Marquee sporting events around the globe have been hit hard by the flight ban. Olympic runner Abdellah Falil was unable to compete in the Boston Marathon on Monday; several Olympic cyclists missed the Amstel Gold race in Holland; the Japanese MotoGP has been postponed; and wrestling fans will be devastated to learn that WWE stars including John Cena, Randy Orton and Batista are stranded in Belfast, Northern Ireland. If the disruptions persist, several European soccer games — including Tuesday's match between Barcelona and Inter Milan — may have to be postponed.

Prepare for lots of snow in New Jersey
Experts warn that the last three times Eyjafjallajökull has erupted, it triggered the eruption of Katla, an even more powerful volcano a few miles away.  Such an eruption could be a global event, reports Roger Boyes in the Times, as Katla's last eruption — in the 1820s — created severe famines around the world, and changed the global "climate so dramatically that New Jersey recorded its largest snowfall and Egypt one of its most enduring droughts."

Some of the Other Interesting Facts about it Iceland Volcano:

• It's in south-west Iceland, it's near the sea, and it covers around 40 square miles
• Its 1,666 meters tall
• The volcano has erupted TWICE. Once in March 2010, which meant 500 people were evacuated from the area, and then again in April (much more powerful than the March eruption) which caused Europe so much disruption
• It's underneath a glacier which causes two problems: 1) flooding when the heat from the volcano melts all the ice, which is why those people were evacuated, and 2) it makes the eruption highly explosive. When the water leaked into the insides of the volcano, the magma turned the water to steam. The resulting explosion shattered the magma into tiny fragments called 'volcanic ash' and shot them high into the sky
• The ash cloud reached 55,000 feet
• Iceland is a volcanic hot spot on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is the dividing line between the Eurasian and North American plates
• There are 35 active volcanoes in Iceland
• There is another volcano nearby and people are worried this eruption could set it off. It's called Katla

An even bigger volcano

• Katla is around 25km away from the other one
• It's got a much bigger magma chamber so it's far more powerful
• Each of the eruptions of Eyjafjallajöekull in the years 920, 1612, and 1821-1823 has been followed by an eruption at Katla
• On 20 April 2010, Icelandic President Olafur Grimsson said: "The time for Katla to erupt is coming close… we have prepared… it is high time for European governments and airline authorities all over the world to start planning for the eventual Katla eruption."
• It could cause more disruption in Europe, but also major flooding in Iceland

The disruption caused by the volcano in Iceland

• British airspace was closed for six days, which meant no planes could fly at all
• 120,000-150,000 Brits were stranded abroad, including loads of teachers and pupils on their Easter holidays
• The disruption has cost airlines across the whole world £1.1 billion
• 1.2 million passengers a day were affected by the closure

Source: BBC News & The Week

CALCULATING CALIFORNIA'S TSUNAMI RISK

The threat that Pacific Ocean tsunamis pose to California's coastline just got its first comprehensive study, a milestone in understanding and preparing for the rare, but devastating, waves.

Following the devastating 2004 tsunami in southeast Asia, scientists scrambled to provide county and municipal emergency planners with an estimate of how vulnerable their coastlines were to tsunamis.

Some 350,000 people live in the path of a worst-case scenario, though overall, the risk to life and property is less than previously thought, state officials reported.

"We used one elevation for the whole state. We just drew a line at 30 feet up from sea level," Rick Wilson of the California Geological Survey said.

With the new effort, Wilson and a team of researchers developed detailed maps of what parts of the coast would flood during a range of disaster scenarios.

Overall they found that most surges wouldn't come close to the 30-foot line they had previously assumed.

"Even if we don't show higher inundation, this really helps emergency planners," Wilson said.

Check the Video Out: Tsunami Warning Center Uses Top Technology

The Washington state coastline is the most tsunami-prone area in the United States. Kasey-Dee Gardner reports on one of the most sophisticated tsunami warning systems in the world.

This is particularly true on the outskirts of San Diego, where the city of Coronado sits on a low-lying peninsula. Old tsunami maps predicted the entire town would be submerged, and local officials feared that they would be forced into a desperate attempt to airlift 24,000 people out of harm's way.

New maps predict the worst waves would reach elevations of 15 to 18 feet.

Large earthquakes can generate tsunamis just about anywhere along the Pacific "Ring of Fire," a 40,000-kilometer-long chain of tectonic unrest that includes Japan, Kamchatka, the Alaska's Aleutian Islands, the Andes in South America and California.

The team considered threats from all of these regions, and found that a magnitude 9.0 or greater earthquake in the eastern Aleutians would be the most dangerous for California.

In particular, Santa Cruz could see waves of 20 to 25 feet. Even the interior of the San Francisco Bay would not be spared, with 10-12 foot waves reaching Alameda, and eight- to 10-foot surges spilling into the towns of Sausalito and San Rafael.

"Any emergency responder can look at these maps and see what it means for them and their neighbors." Dale Cox of the United States Geological Survey in Sacramento said. "It's intellectually accessible to the public, too. If people are asking 'gee, where do I go?' these maps will tell you. People can look at these and easily tell what's in it for them."

Source: Discovery News

Dramatic Flood Rescue Explained

Check this out: Dramatic Flood Rescue Explained:

The daring rescue of an elderly woman from a flooded river in Missouri is caught on video. Jorge Ribas interviews one of the Missouri National Guard citizen-soldiers to get the details of the mission.
Source: Discovery News

DEADLY QUAKES INSIDE CONTINENTAL PLATES

According to researchers, the main reason for high death tolls within continental interiors is because inland quake zones are poorly mapped.

Our perception of seismic risk is skewed into thinking earthquakes at plate boundaries are more deadly. We're wrong.

Knowledge of seismic risk is badly skewed in favor of earthquakes that occur on plate boundaries, such as the March 11 temblor that hit northeast Japan, rather than those that strike deep inland, a pair of scientists said on Sunday.

In commentary appearing in the journal Nature Geoscience, Philip England of Oxford University and James Jackson of Cambridge University say that in seismic terms, the 9.0-magnitude Sendai quake was "a remarkable story of resilience."

Good civic training and building construction meant that the death rate was "impressively low," they said. Around 25,000 people died, or 0.4 percent of those exposed to the event, and most of these died from the tsunami that followed.

THE GIST

·     Earthquake preparedness is high around seismically active tectonic plate boundaries, often saving many lives and structures.

·   Quake death rates within continental interiors are higher than that of continental plate boundaries.

·   Their faults are often very complex and slow-moving, sometimes taking thousands of years to rupture.

The March 11 event occurred on a plate boundary, where the jigsaw of plates that float on Earth's crust jostle and grind and slide under each other.

England and Jackson say plate boundaries are relatively well-studied, but a far greater threat lurks in continental inland areas.

"Death rates in earthquakes within continental interiors have often exceeded five percent and can be as high as 30 percent," they warn.

According to their count, over the past 120 years, there have been around 130 quakes around the world where a thousand people or more have died.

Of these, about 100 have occurred in continental interiors, causing 1.4 million deaths, whereas earthquakes at plate boundaries have inflicted 800,000 deaths, roughly half of them by tsunamis.

Among the inland killers were those in Bam, Iran, which cost 30,000 lives in 2003; in Muzzafarabad, Pakistan, which led to 75,000 deaths in 2005; and the 2008 Wenchuan quake in China in 2008 in which 70,000 died.

The main reason for these high tolls is because inland quake zones are poorly mapped, the commentary says.

Their faults are often very complex and slow-moving, sometimes taking hundreds or even thousands of years to build up tension to the point where they rupture.

Jackson and England call for the study of inland faults to be given the same priority as boundary faults, starting with the 10 million square kilometers (3.86 million sq. miles) of the Alpine-Himalayan belt, which stretches from Italy, Greece and Turkey, across the Middle East, Iran and central Asia, to China.

"The severity of this threat is increasing rapidly as millions of people every year migrate into mega-cities in vulnerable locations, many of which were devastated by earthquakes in the past, when their populations were much smaller."

Source: Discovery News

TORNADO STRIKES MISSOURI TOWN, KILLING 116

May 23, 2011 - The deadliest single tornado to strike the United States in nearly 60 years has reduced the Missouri town of Joplin to rubble, ripping buildings apart and killing at least 116 people.

The deadliest single tornado to strike the United States in nearly 60 years has reduced the Missouri town of Joplin to rubble, ripping buildings apart and killing at least 116 people.

Disaster struck on Sunday evening when, with little warning, the monster twister tore a strip six miles long and more than a 1/2 mile wide through the center of the town.

Rescuers worked through the night to try to find people trapped in their homes, relying on torchlight as they listened for terrified cries from survivors piercing through the blackness.

Heavy winds and strong rain forced teams to halt the effort on Monday morning and some rescuers took advantage of the brief respite to catch a bit of much-needed sleep inside one badly damaged bank.

THE GIST

·         Local media reports that 116 people have been killed after Joplin took a "direct hit" from a tornado.

·         Missouri Governor has declared a state of emergency as the threat of further tornadoes continues.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency late Sunday and activated the National Guard to help out after one of the worst disasters in the state's history.

President Barack Obama called Nixon and offered his condolences to those affected, assuring the governor that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would provide whatever assistance was needed.

"The president has directed FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate to travel to Missouri to ensure the state has all the support it needs," a White House statement said, adding a FEMA team had already been dispatched.

Caring for the injured was made more difficult because the main hospital, Saint John's Regional Medical Center, had to be evacuated after suffering a direct hit -- the tornado ripped off its roof and smashed all its windows.

Media reported that cries could still be heard early Monday from survivors trapped in the wreckage, with the latest tragedy coming less than a month after a horrific tornado outbreak left 354 dead across seven U.S. states.

Authorities estimated that up to 30 percent of Joplin, which lies near the border with Oklahoma and Kansas, had been damaged by the tornado, which experts said carried winds of up to 200 miles per hour.

It was the deadliest of 46 tornadoes reported to the National Weather Service in seven states on Sunday.

"It's a war zone," Scott Meeker of the Joplin Globe newspaper said.

"We've got hundreds of wounded being treated at Memorial Hall (hospital), but they were quickly overwhelmed and ran out of supplies, so they've opened up a local school as a triage center."

Obama earlier sent his "deepest condolences" to victims and said the federal government stood ready to help Americans as needed.

"Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to the families of all those who lost their lives in the tornadoes and severe weather that struck Joplin, Missouri, as well as communities across the Midwest today," the president said in a statement sent from Air Force One as he flew to Europe.

"We commend the heroic efforts by those who have responded and who are working to help their friends and neighbors at this very difficult time."

People in Joplin clawed through the rubble looking for friends, family and neighbors after the storm tore buildings apart and turned cars into crumpled heaps of metal.

Flames and thick black smoke poured out of the wreckage of shattered homes, and water gushed out of broken pipes as shocked survivors surveyed the damage, early photos showed.

A tangled medical helicopter lay in the rubble outside Saint John's Regional Medical Center.

Jeff Law, 23, was able to take shelter in a storm cellar and was overwhelmed by what he saw when he emerged.

"I've lived in this neighborhood my entire life, and I didn't know where I was," Law told the Springfield News-Leader. "Everything was unrecognizable, completely unrecognizable. It's like Armageddon."

The emergency manager at the neighboring county of Springfield-Greene was told that at least 24 people were killed before he could rush over to help, a spokeswoman said.

Officials said the last twister to wreak such loss of life occurred in 1953 in Worcester, Massachusetts, when a tornado killed 90 people.

On Saturday, a deadly tornado pummeled the east Kansas town of Reading, killing a man and damaging an estimated 80 percent of Reading's structures, mostly wood-frame buildings.

Meanwhile, a tornado was also responsible for the death of one person in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Sunday, authorities said. At least 30 others in that city and its suburbs were injured.

Source: Discovery News

ICELAND VOLCANO ERUPTS

Satellite image of Grimsvotn erupting in 2004.

The Grimsvoetn volcano under Iceland's largest glacier began erupting Saturday, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said, reporting a tall plume of smoke rising from the crater.

"An eruption at Grimsvoetn has started and there's an airplane on its way there now to investigate further," Haraldur Eirkisson of the office told AFP.

"There was a cloud rising up from Grimsvoetn around 1900 GMT and at just before 2000 GMT it had reached an altitude of 11 kilometers (6.8 miles)," he added.

Another meteorologist at the same office, Fridjon Magnusson, told AFP less than two hours later that the column of smoke had swelled to reach an altitude of 20 kilometers.

Grimsvoetn is Iceland's most active volcano, having erupted nine times between 1922 and 2004. It lies beneath the Vatnajoekull glacier in the southeast of the North Atlantic island nation.

The eruption in April last year of Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano, southwest of Grimsvoetn, shut down large swathes of European airspace for almost a month amid fears the volcanic ash could wreak havoc on aircraft engines.

The Gist

·    Grimsvoetn volcano, located beneath Iceland's Vatnajoekull glacier, last erupted      in 2004.

·       Last year, Iceland's Eyjafjoell volcano, southwest of Grimsvoetn, shut down large swathes of European airspace for almost a month.

·    For now, it is not known if Grimsvoetn will produce the troublesome fine ash   Eyjafjoell generated.

No two volcanic eruptions are the same, and it remained unclear late Saturday if the new eruption threatened to emit a similar kind of ash -- fine, with very sharp particles -- like the massive plume that burst from Eyjafjoell.

"The eruption has not yet spread very far, and is still looming over the Vatnajoekull glacier," Magnusson pointed out.

"These are just the first few hours of the eruption. We can't say yet whether this will have an effect on air traffic like Eyjafjoell," he added.

The problem with last year's eruption, which caused the planet's biggest air space shutdown since World War II, was according to the researchers that it happened under a glacier, bursting through 200-300 meters of ice.

It was the "interaction between the cold water and the hot magma that made the particles really tiny," and therefore especially dangerous to aircraft, Susan Stipp, a professor at the Nano-Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen, told AFP late last month.

"The (ash) particles were small so they went high and far. They were sharp, so they were a danger to airplane windows. It's like sand-blasting the airplane. And they were small and could melt at temperatures common in jet engines ... and could cause failure," she told AFP.

While Saturday's eruption had sent smoke high in the sky, Magnusson pointed out that there so far was only "heavy ash at the bottom of the bloom (that) has not reached high heights."

Bjarni Steinthorsson, a farmer who lives near the Vatnajoekull glacier, meanwhile told the Morgunbladid daily's website small amounts of ash had begun falling in the area and "the snow is getting darker."

He said that he expected more ash to fall overnight, although what happened would depend on the direction of the winds, which were currently almost still at the eruption site.

Iceland's State Road Authority meanwhile announced late Saturday it had temporarily closed a road near the glacier that is part of the national highway system.

Grimsvoetn is also located under a glacier, in an enormous, eight-kilometer (five-mile) diameter caldera -- a collapsed volcanic crater -- near the center of the Vatnajoekull icefield.

When it last erupted in November 2004, volcanic ash fell as far away as mainland Europe and caused minor disruptions in flights to and from Iceland.

Geologists had worried late last year the volcano was about to blow when they noticed a large river run caused by rapidly melting glacier ice.

Eruptions at Grimsvoetn traditionally result in massive flooding, although this has little impact since the surrounding areas are uninhabited.

Source: Discovery News

Facts about Hurricane Katrina

Facts about Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest U.S. hurricane on record and one of the worst natural disasters in U. S. history. Hurricane Katrina will be remembered for its catastrophic flooding in New Orleans due to levee failure.

Katrina formed in the central Bahamas and moved northwest. It made landfall in south Florida on the Broward/Miami-Dade counties line as a category 1 hurricane. Virginia Key reported a gust to 93 mph. Heavy rain also fell. Key West had 10.05" and Homested 14.04". As Hurricane Katrina moved over the Gulf of Mexico, it turned north and strengthened into a category 5 hurricane with top sustained winds of 175 mph. Katrina was large in size and gererated a large wind field. This created huge waves in the Gulf Of Mexico where a buoy 74 miles south of Dauphin Island, AL measured a peak significant wave height of 55 feet. Katrina ingested some dry air and weakened into a category 3 hurricane as it made landfall near Buras, LA. It briefly passed over the Gulf of Mexico waters again and made its last landfall on the Mississippi - Louisiana border. In Louisiana, a storm surge of 11.8 feet was measured at New Orleans Lakefront airport. New Orleans International airport had a peak gust to 98 mph. New Orlean's wind damage was comparable only to a category 1 or 2 hurricane. The majority of the damage in New Orleans was due to levee failure. Up to 80% of the city of New Orleans was flooded with up to 20 feet of water. The Mississippi coast suffered catastrophic damage due to storm surge and wind damage. A surge of 24-28 feet was measured along the Mississippi coast with the highest near Pass Christian at 27.8 feet. The storm surge went inland for about six miles, but up to twelve miles along the rivers. Pearl River EOC at Poplarville recorded a wind gust to 135 mph. In all, total damage estimates were placed near $81 billion.

Hurricane Katrina Facts Summary

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Lowest pressure: 902 millibars / 26.64 inches

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Sixth strongest hurricane ever measured by pressure in the Atlantic basin.

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Third strongest hurricane ever to make a U.S. landfall measured by pressure.

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Pressure and sustained wind at landfall: (Broward/Miami-Dade county line) 984 millibars / 80 mph

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Pressure and sustained wind at landfall: (Buras, LA) 920 millibars / 125 mph

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Pressure and sustained wind at landfall: (LA-MS border) 928 millibars / 120 mph

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Maximum sustained winds at peak: 175 mph

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Fatalities: 1833

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Storm surge height: 27.8 feet, Pass Christian, MS

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Up to 80% of New Orleans was under water from flooding.

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Hurricane Katrina began as a tropical depression near the southeastern Bahamas

Hurricane Katrina Facts: Hurricane Katrina weakened and became extratropical in the Ohio Valley.

Source:TropicalWeather.net