When mother nature decides to act

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The Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull continued to erupt on April 19, sending out a plume of ash and lightning and offering a rare glimpse at the mysterious electrical phenomenon known as a “dirty thunderstorm.”



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Another view of Eyjafjallajokul on April 19. Evidence collected in January 2006 following the initial volcanic eruptions of Mount Augustine in Alaska revealed that eruptions produce a large amount of electric charge.



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The Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull, photographed on April 19. The activity may be similar to that observed by scientists following Mount Augustine's 2006 eruption in Alaska: “Continuous radiation and bursts of lightning within the rock and ash as it rushed upward from the vent,”


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Volcanic eruptions are lit by lightning on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on April 18. Scientists who studied the Mount Augustine eruption concluded that the lightning occurred in two phases, reports Far North Science. “In a process that had never been documented before, the first series of zapping bolts occurred because the ash and rock and other debris emerged from the volcano’s throat already loaded with a high positive electrical charge.”

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Volcanic eruptions are lit by lightning on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on April 18. Scientists are unsure whether the charge comes out of the volcano or is created closer to the atmosphere following an eruption.



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Volcanic eruptions on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on April 18.


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Volcanic eruptions are lit by lightning on the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on April 18. In conventional thunderstorms, electric charges are sparked when ice particles collide.


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The Eyjafjallajokull volcano, Iceland, photographed on April 17. In “dirty thunderstorms," scientists believe that static charges are ignited by ice particles, as well as ash and rock fragments from the volcano.

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A couple sleeps at Gatwick airport in southern England on April 19.


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A stranded passenger waits with her luggage at Termini train station in Rome on April 19.



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A man crosses an empty departures hall at Gatwick airport in southern England on April 19.



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A National Geographic film crew sets up on southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull glacier after landing close to the volcano on Sunday, April 18. Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below the glacial ice cap, magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit.

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Farmer Bjarni Thorvaldsson pulls volcanic ash off a barn roof on April 18.


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Volcanic ash mixes with water, sliding down a barn roof near Eyjafjallajokull on April 18.


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A passenger waits at Bilbao airport in northern Spain on April 18, after all flights were canceled due to the ash.


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Synchronized ice skating coaches Danka Durasevic, right, and sisters Sara and Sandra Perl, all from Croatia, look for a cab that will fit all their luggage in New York on April 18. They were among the thousands of visitors stranded in the U.S. due to the ash.

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A cloud of ash looms over a farm on April 17.


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Dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir of Nupur, Iceland, looks for cattle lost in ash clouds on April 17.



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Ranchers corral cattle in Nupur as volcanic ash swirls around them on April 17


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Volcanic ash is seen over Iceland´s main ring road near Skogar, east of the eruption.

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A plane flies past smoke from the volcano on April 17.


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A traveler watches a giant board announcing canceled flights the Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris on April 17. Three airports in Paris and 23 others across the country were closed because of the cloud of ash.


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Travelers rest at the deserted Austrian Airlines terminal at the Vienna airport after all flights were grounded on April 17.


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Train passengers crowd the Milan railway station in Italy. Europeans are turning to different modes of transportation with so many flights grounded

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Cars line up at a departure point at the car ferry terminal in Calais, France, on Saturday. Ferry operators in Britain received a flurry of bookings from people desperate to cross the English Channel to France, while London taxi company Addison Lee said it had received requests for journeys to cities as far away as Paris, Milan, Amsterdam and Zurich.


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A reddish sky at sunrise hangs over Budapest, Hungary, as ash spewed by Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano reaches across Europe.



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Horses graze as a cloud of volcanic matter rises from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano, on Friday, April 16, in Fimmvorduhals, Iceland.


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Passengers rest on cots as they wait for the resumption of air travel on Friday at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Passengers wait in a terminal in Frankfurt on Friday.


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Passengers wait for transportation to Gatwick Airport after arriving in Glasgow, Scotland on Friday.


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A ground stewardess of Air France/KLM distributes croissants to would-be travellers at Vienna's Schwechat airport on Friday.


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Check-in counters are closed at the airport in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Friday.

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Friday's projected spread and density of the cloud of volcanic ash emanating form the volcano in southeast Iceland.


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A plume of volcanic ash from Iceland, top left, streams eastward on Thursday.


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Volcanic scientists leave the area after collecting samples of ash in eastern Iceland on Thursday, April 15.


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Passengers wait at the departures area at Madrid Airport in Spain on Thursday.

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Smoke and steam hangs over the volcano in Iceland early Thursday. Ash from the eruption is drifting into other countries in northern Europe and forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights.


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A sign at England's Luton Airport warns passengers of flight delays and cancellations after Britain's Civil Aviation Authority on Thursday grounded all non-emergency flights.



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A farmer took this picture of the Eyjafjöll volcano shortly after its most recent eruption.


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The eruption melted ice on the glacier around the volcano, flooding local areas. Hundreds of residents were evacuated.

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Glacier melt from the erupton flooded areas along this this river on Thursday.



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A plume of ash and steam rises in Iceland on Thursday.


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Rescue teams evacuate residents from rapidly rising waters near the volcano on Thursday.


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A plume of steam from the volcano rises 22,000 feet on Thursday.

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A plume of steam from the volcano rises 22,000 feet on Thursday.


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Rivers of lava flow from a volcanic eruption between the Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull glaciers on March 24.


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A helicopter flies in front of lava shooting from a volcanic eruption between the Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull glaciers on March 24.


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Tourists gather to watch lava spurting from the site of a volcanic eruption at the Fimmvorduhals volcano near the Eyjafjallajokull glacier on March 27.


IT IS BELIEVED THERE ARE ABOUT 150,000 BRITONS STUCK OUTSIDE UK WHO WERE HOLIDAYING DURING EASTER

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Viwanja vya UK vimefunguliwa masaa 2 yaliyopita na vimekuwa busy kupokea ndege kadhaa kutoka kona zote za ulimwengu huenda hali ikarejea kama kawaida baada ya siku 7 .... ...

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Air chaos gives time to reflect on the beauty
and pain of travel


Grounded: The beauty of overland travel

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BBC News, Washington

I know that if I was stuck with my four children on the holiday from hell in Spain or Greece, spending $4,000 on a taxi from Oslo to Oostende or aching to get back to a funeral, wedding or job interview I would be cursing Mount Unpronouncable with all the Nordic anger I could muster. But I am sitting comfortably in Washington, staring out at a champagne sky, vaguely wondering if the ash will cross the Atlantic and listing all the hidden blessings of nature's bilious belch.

First of all there is the terrifying beauty of the eruptions. It is quite refreshing to see a display like this that has not been produced by Pixar or Miramax. Mother Nature is still the best special effects outfit on the planet. Secondly this is a crisis that we really cannot blame on anyone: not the Icelandic government, not Goldman Sachs, not Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, not Barack Obama, the North Koreans, the Tea Party or Sarah Palin. The mountain has upstaged the petty bickering of politics everywhere. And while many airlines are complaining about the draconian no fly rules imposed by the European Commission, even the most gung ho pilot will be loath to swear on his flight manual that this particular cocktail of ash cannot shut down a jet engine.

Nature has simply left us all guessing and probing. The barricades of preconceived ideas have momentarily been dismantled. We are all becoming amateur volcanologists. Dinner parties around the world are dominated by arguments over carbon and glass concentrations and the effects of lava on ice. Cloistered in the air And then there are the pleasures of being grounded. I actually quite like travelling by plane. If I am lucky enough to sit in a comfy seat, I love sitting back, peering out at the cotton wool clouds and weeping over a nostalgic movie - I seem to cry a lot at 30,000 feet - while soldiering away on a bottle of wine. But this is not really travelling, is it? This is a very immobile, cloistered activity, strapped into a chair, barely acknowledging the passenger next to you and focussing more and more on the internal.

In fact, whenever a journey on a plane forces you to notice your surroundings it is almost always bad news. Someone screaming in the row behind you. A noisy child. The severe bump in the air that makes you hastily open your window shades. The captain telling you that the flight has been diverted. Or worse. Flying, at its best, should be an inward journey from which you just happen to alight thousands of miles away. I have had my share of surface journeys: boat trips in the Philippines; interminable car rides in Indonesian Borneo. And I will, of course, never forget fighting with my brother in the back of the family Peugeot heading to France or Italy for a summer holiday. It was not all pleasant. But it did make you notice what you were travelling through.

Surprise encounters

I once took the Trans-Siberian Railway from Beijing to Moscow and then hopped on three more trains to Warsaw, Berlin and London. It was in 1983 and took almost two weeks. I dined, lunched and breakfasted in six different restaurant cars. The Mongolian one had the nicest waitresses but sadly no food. None. The Russian one had food that you had to bid for with hard currency on the platform of each station. The Chinese one had food that was so good, people used to take the train just to have dinner. I almost got left behind, while taking a pee in Ulan Bator. I met a nice Polish girl in Irkutsk and fell out with her in Krasnoyarsk. The relationship lasted three days.

I noticed that in those Cold War days the biggest difference between stations was not Beijing or Moscow. It was the four-minute journey across one city and the Iron Curtain from the drabness and pinched fear of Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin to the seizure-inducing neon and chaotic exuberance of Bahnhof Zoo in West Berlin.

Yes, there were dull moments. Unless you really have a thing for birch forests, most of Siberia is rather tedious. The Romanian diplomat snored. I got sick and tired of opening and closing 25 train doors to get to the all important restaurant car. But I will never forget the awe-inspiring sense of distance and the many surprise encounters. If I had taken the plane, it would have taken 10 hours and I would not be thinking about it a quarter of a century later. Perhaps we should prevail upon Mount Unpronouncable to blow its top once a year…for a week.

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The major airports in UK have reopened after a clearance ..... .......