“The last three weeks there have been earthquakes about 10 kilometers deep below Eyjafjall-glacier, which is very similar to a series of events taken place in the years 1994 and 1999,” says geologist Pall Einarsson.
“Both years there were magma intrusions under Eyjafjall-glacier and it was leading to a possible eruption, although Katla never erupted. These magma intrusions are very close to each other and could have influence on each other causing a possible eruption at Katla.”
The Katla volcano is 4,961 feet (1512 meters) high and categorized as a sub-glacial volcano. Katla is located on the southern coast of Iceland close to the town of Vik. The last big eruption occured in the year 1918 with a small eruption in 1955. Since 930 AD, 16 eruptions have occured. The word “Katla” in Icelandic refers to a kettle and is also a female name in Iceland.
Are the people in Vík í Mýrdal ready for evacuation? Not easy for them to live under constant stress. We will monitor the situation from the space.
And we also hope that the servers of IMO (http://www.vedur.is/) will be reliable this time and not the like during the early ours after the earthquake in South Iceland on 29 May 2008 when IMO servers were down (when they had to be reliable).