The Icelandic Met has issued a new bulletin about magma buildup in the Svartsengi area. Their current estimate of magma buildup based on surface deformation/land rise is 14 million cubic meters, which is equal or greater to the amounts which previously triggered eruptions in the area. They're advising that another eruption may be imminent and with very little warning, as the ground is already heavily fractured.
In Iceland, they're in the process of building a second set of magma defense berms on Grindavik's eastern flanks. The primary berm system has been overflowed twice in recent weeks and lava piled up behind the existing berms is taller than the berms now across much of their length.
The new berms will be 6 meters high and offset from the original ones by about 120 meters.
The problem as I see it is there isn't really a way for this new berm system to rechannel/divert lava which spills over elsewhere. It's more forming a "catchment basin" with with a fixed dimension and volume. When it's full, it's full.
Right now, it's what they can do. Mother nature doesn't argue, she simply does what she does. Will she keep spewing out lava in this location for years?
Looks like we're starting to see a lot of small but very shallow tremors in the vicinity of Svartsengi. Svartsengi has continued to see significant land uplift even with the outflow of magma in the area, indicating significant and rising magma levels below the surface. How much longer until the area sees another significant eruption?
If you want to get an idea of the size of the magma cones in Iceland, check out the people in the bottom left of this Live from Iceland webcam image for scale.
546 building owners in Grindavik have applied to the government to sell their properties to the Icelandic government at 95% of the fire damage assessment value. This is out of a total of 930 properties which qualify for the government's buyout offer. So, considerably more than half of the people in Grindavik have given up on the idea that there is a future for them in the volcano/earthquake besieged town.
Night sometimes lets you better observe the flow patterns of the lava. Here are four stills where you can clearly see lava moving into the quarry area at bottom center. Afaik, this is the pit where most of the material for the defensive berms originated. It's a big hole, but the eruption is spilling out ~14.5 cubic meters per second. Once it fills, Route 43 will probably get overrun in not too much time. ~1/3rd of a mile to the road.
How much is 14.5 cubic meters of lava? How to visualize that in human understandable units? Well, the outflow would fill a 40 foot shipping container every 4.62 seconds. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, so it is the equivalent of about 18,700 shipping containers worth of lava every day which all has to go somewhere.
Here is what a 20 foot shipping container looks like courtesy of Wikipedia. A 20 footer is considered a "twenty-foot equivalent unit" and its what they use on big shipping container ships to measure their capacity. 18,700 forty foot containers of lava would equal twice as many TEUs. Lets round it to 37,400 TEUs.
The largest container shipping cargo ships in the world are the Irina class operated by the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC). They can carry a max of 24,346 TEUs and look like this:
Image courtesy Wikipedia.
So, the "little" eruption in Iceland is currently spewing lava out at the rate of 1.5 of the world's largest cargo ship per day. That's a lot of lava.
Construction work has begun to build a road over the top of the still cooling lava from the still ongoing eruption which overflowed the main north/south road to Grindavik. They already had to do this once before in the prior eruption.
Iceland's Met office has released an update stating that they're continuing to see ground uplift around Svartsengi even as the eruption continues. This basically means that more lava is flowing into the underground magma reservoirs than is reaching the surface. There's enough magma moving in to do both!
You can also see the extent of current outflow on the map they posted.
Here is the weather forecast for where the vog (volcanic fog) of poisonous gases is blowing. The Icelandic->English translation is a bit lacking. Soda snacks!
Covering two of the principal roadways in the area. Even people who were smart and took the "long way round" out of Grindavik are likely driving through nastiness.
After weeks of people scratching their heads after looking at GPS ground deformation sensors which showed the earth bulging more than previous eruptions, an eruption has finally started again in Iceland.
Some more cars leaving Blue Lagoon. Likely the last out. Staff/Emergency personnel. Hope it is a sign that everyone got out safely. It is 9:12 pm in Iceland.
You can watch all the action at the multiview picker here:
@violetmadder There is confirmation now that Tefra and vog is being blown over the Grindavíkurvegur access road. Basically, people driving along this road are at risk and should be taking the long way around the peninsula to evacuate.