There's not many places in the world that you can watch the northern lights dancing over you through a haze of sulfur dioxide, but that was the scene that met me this evening.
It was a beautiful day working out on my land in the countryside in Hvalfjörður, unseasonably warm, with calm air and an impeccably blue sky. But as we rounded Tíðaskarð, Reykjavík was hardly visible through a deep blue haze.
The sunset over the sea was blood-red on the way back. The moon was of a color I've never seen, like a really bright harvest moon, the exact same hue saturation and intensity of the LCD panel on a 2001 Honda Insight. And the later, at home, the Northern Lights came into the mix.
Okay, fine, Mist, thanks for the show. You can leave now.
So stands the situation:
(Credit: NASA)
Here's the meters near my land:
Here's some meters in the Reykjavík area:
It's only been for the most part in the "moderate" level, occasionally spiking barely higher, seldum breaking 1000. Nothing like they've been getting in the east. Directly noticeable symptoms of it are limited. But really, I'm already getting sick of it.
It's been coming in otherwise beautiful weather. Time before winter sets in is limited and I have things to do outside. As do many, many other people. It's not at life-threatening levels, so one can't just avoid it forever. And walking around everywhere in a gas mask isn't an option. First off, as much as pollution itself is uncomfortable and an inconvenience, so is wearing a gas mask. And secondly, if you're with others, others you don't want to be freaking out when pollution levels are only moderate and who don't own masks, the last thing you want is to be walking around looking like you just stepped out an ebola cleanup zone.
So the short of it? Yeah, I had a headache during one o the peaks. Yeah, I had some minor lung irritation on the drive home today. Yeah, I had a headache earlier. My eyes were fine for most of the day but started really bugging me this evening, but they seem to be getting better. I've had this weird taste and tooth sensitivity thing several times when the Mist has been here. Which of these if any can I credit to the plume? Beats me. Possibly all. Possibly none. How could I know? I'm not exactly analyzing the situation with a double blind comparison with a statistically signiicant control group; I have a sample size of one in a very noisy dataset. What I don't want is to have to think about it. About how bad it might get. About what long term exposure might do. About what effect it'll have on my plants or my parrot. And the damned stuff is so visible, so distinct in its appearance, you know when it's here without knowing how bad it is. It turns the ground the color o the sky.
And the forecast? The reversal pattern exists across the entire 7 day wind forecast. So, yippee. Bring on the vog.
Then again, some people apparently like vog. Some people with enough money to apparently ignore the law.
Meet Goga Ashkenazi, investment-banking billionaire and fashion mogul and apparently a fan of improv dancing by lava flows with her entourage:
(Credit: Goga Ashkenazi)
(Credit: Goga Ashkenazi)
Never mind the risk she was taking, how levels of over 130000 µg/m³ have been measured at the site at times and what's "upwind" can change rapidly; the simple fact is, this is a closed zone. When her "stopover" came to the attention of the public, first they started asking, who the heck is this woman?. Then they alerted the authorities.
The authorities say they did not open the zone for her, and consider this a law enforcement issue. The police began asking questions of just what exactly she was doing there. She has not responded to any inquiries. The company that owns the helicopter seen, Reykjavík Helicopters, claims not to know what one of their helicopters was doing on the ground there, and to be looking into it. Clearly someone let a billionire land in an area that there's no secret about it being a closed zone, and I'm going to go wildly out on a limb here and speculate a large monetary payment was involved. Who knows at this point what will come of it, however.
Wait a minute, so it's a closed zone? So why does a different tour company, Extreme Iceland, show pictures of people happily posing in front of the volcano on their website advertizing their tours to tourists?
(Credit: Extreme Iceland)
Oh, simple, they say - these are members of the media and their guides! That, of course, raised the obvious question: so, you're trying to trick your customers? No no, definitely not, they say, because if anyone asks, they reply no, they can't land, and the pictures are only there because "they're beautiful pictures".
Æji. Let's look at the map.
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
I'll add this to my animation:
Now, I'm going to call attention to two things. First, the infrared:
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
... and then, Míla:
Both of these these to me suggest to things: the current lava tongue is no longer being fed by the lava river, and instead it's pouring out to the south of the most recent flow. Hopefully we'll get clarification on this before long.
My main feature that I had hoped for tonight is not ready yet, so my apologies. :)