Live feed from Iceland erupting volcano [video]

When I got back from the hike I heard on the radio that this location was, ahem, not recommended. It was closed off yesterday and a short while later the crater walls collapsed in that direction.

https://youtu.be/eeAf1kZ7_ZE

But there were a few of us at that spot at the time so at least I wouldn't have died alone :).

I don't have exact measurements. But for some reference, here's a drone shot from the location. I'm the lone guy standing above the SAR team.

https://www.hugi.io/img/crater.jpg

The caldera is 30m high

That is ridiculous... Oh, an actual demand for the sharing service? Let's shut it down temporarily until the demand passes. Have they never heard of caching?

I didn't know they did that, thanks for the notification! Moved some of the videos to a YouTube playlist and updated the post.

I think the video might be in H.265 format. Outside of Safari, no browser supports it, not even Chrome. https://caniuse.com/hevc

The video was probably originally in H.265 format and Apple apparently did no attempt at transcoding it to a format that's more widely understood like H.264.

Oh yes, you feel the warmth. The smell that immediately hit me was comforting, like you just lit a nice hardwood barbecue, probably from soil and plant material burning when coming into contact with the magma. The crater is loud and deeply rumbly and makes you feel the raw power of the Earth.

The first time I saw volcanic activity was in Rotorua[0], in New Zealand... I think the big volcano there is dormant but because it sits on top of a huge caldera, it still has plenty of volcanic activity, including boiling mud and geysers! It's an amazing place to visit. You can feel the warmth of the rocks and near the geyser, there are water ponds nearly as hot as boiling (incredibly clear water too). Seeing the geyser explode is the highlight of the visit, of course... But just seeing the boiling mud (which you can see everytwhere in town, basically) and hearing the noise of boiling liquid under your feet is an amazing feeling.

I was young and stayed in the local backpacker which had a naturally-warm water pool!

As you approach the city, you feel a very strong smell of sulphur (a smell described usually as rotten eggs), but as you stay in the town you more or less get used to the smell and stop feeling it... it's not as bad as it sounds.

Highly recommend a visit if you're around Australia or the South Pacific.

One day I want to visit Iceland as well, it looks amazing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotorua

I climbed Mt. Etna once (in Sicily). It wasn't erupting at the time but there were active lava flows etc. The scary thing was that even though conditions were relatively benign, a sudden change of wind direction blew a stream of sulphorous-smelling air in the direction of our group and we all had to run back down to the chair lift gasping for air.

The American author, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote "The smell of sulfur is strong, but not unpleasant to a sinner.” after visiting Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano in his book "Roughing It".

Not been near a volcano, but Iceland also has a very sulphuric smell in general, like eggs almost. It is in everything like the air and the water.

If your question wasn't specific to this volcano, but any volcano, the answer is that every one is different.

A few years ago, I visited the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua. It wasn't one you could get super close to, and the photos are a bit underwhelming, but it was still very impressive to see in person. This is what you can expect to see as a tourist: https://hotelplazacolon.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Masay...

The heat coming off of the volcano was significant, but not exactly overwhelming. The sulfur smell was overwhelming (apparently Masaya emits a lot of sulfur dioxide), and there were restrictions as the length of time tourists could stay at the volcano due to the gasses. There were signs all over, posted in English and Spanish warning about the health effects of the gasses emitted.

I've been up one in Guatemala but the thing that I remember most was how popular lava is with hoardes of tourists

I'd add one anecdote: I went hiking on one of the Hawaiian volcanos a few years ago and got up close with some active (but extremely slow-moving) lava. Here's a pic of me poking it with a stick:

https://imgur.com/DuwuCg1

What amazed me was the absolute sheer about of heat generated from that one TINY little patch. Like, as intense as standing in front of a pizza oven going at full blast. I could stand about ~15 seconds of it once I exposed the molten part, and then I had to step away. Overall in the area it was warm - mostly because it was Hawaii and hot out! - but also because of general ambient warmth. But it was just that - warmth.

But when I exposed that piece of molten lava - that was HEAT.

Have you ever burnt a resistor?

It likely looks like a 10 pound burned resistor.

My first thought was that it could just as well have been a shot from Mustafar in Star Wars. Stunning video!

To me it looked like a demoscene clip.

That and he flew through a shower of molten rock, the smallest little blob would take that drone out.

Some things are with the risk though, turned out amazing!

A bit higher too; there's a lump of lava that ended up above it.

I am surprised the drone survived (or did it?)

In case anyone doesn’t notice this little detail... right in the last few seconds you can see one of the erupting chunks of lava pass out of the frame in the vertical direction. It looks like the drone made a lucky pass through the top of the erupting lava plume, narrowly missing red hot chunks of lava.

To clarify... it looks like that, can anyone more familiar with the original post confirm more details? Because it could obviously just have been a trick of the drone’s speed combined with the camera field of view just making it look like it whizzed under a chunk of red hot lava... which is still neat camera work... but it would be so much more awesome if it wasn’t just a camera effect and it actually did fly through between erupting chunks of lava.

I could only think:

TOO LOW - TERRAIN! PULL UP! TOO LOW - TERRAIN! PULL UP!

It's not that dangerous in real time (lava is slooow), especially if you have hills like they do close by to go up on.

When the Kárahnjúkar dam was being built the Ásatrú would visit the construction site and curse it, so Landsvirkjun (Iceland's power company) would send priests down to sprinkle holy water over it, to which the Ásatrú responded by cursing it, and the priests again sent in... this went on round and round. The Ásatrú were broadly against the project.

Arguably this had some effect. When a prominent anti-dam farmer from near Egilsstaðir was excavating his land to build an extension to his house, strange things kept on happening: His cows treading on their udders, workers falling into the pit and breaking bones. His wife claimed to see two figures when each time one of these happenings occured. An old man and a young. Finally in the pit they came across the central beam of an ancient house, and a magnificent circle made of a spherical stone made of spheres containing crystals - you found individual spheres - I know this is the wrong term sorry - scattered around their farmland. Anyway upon finding these the farmer called to the ghosts and promised that the stone would be taken to the museum in Egilsstaðir and the beam would be featured prominantly in their new farmhouse, in exchange for the ghosts leaving them in peace and haunting Kárahnjúkar instead. It was then in the process of its initial flood.

Soon after very strange things occured at Kárahnjúkar. Workers were injured, serious technical problems manifested.

If there's anywhere in the world where making pacts with supernatural forces is possible, it's Iceland.

Since the meteoric rise in tourism post financial crisis, more funds have been put into upgrading many of the tourist areas with propper walking paths and cordoning off certain areas.

This has mostly been done to preserve the areas from undue damage from humans, but also for their increased safety.

Our view of health and safety is still vastly different from the US for example. It does help that liability for your own personal health most often lies on your own shoulders instead of somebody else's.

Iceland must be less litigious and have less lawyers per capita.

New Zealand is/was similar. Then in 2019 White Island erupted and killed 22 people and injured a similar number. The injuries have been truely horrific. Skin grafts alone came to a quarter of a million square centimetres of skin for victims.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Whakaari_/_White_Island...

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/health/118741979/whakaari--wh...

That's what has been done at Yellowstone National Park. All the tourist-accessible thermal features have boardwalks built out to and around them for both safety and environmental protection from the millions of vistors. Other features, like Old Faithful geyser, has been surround by cement paths and benches for visitors to view eruptions from. The backcountry, however, has no such facilities and people who visit those are basically on their own and need to use their own discretion. That said, people die in hot springs every year because they're too dumb to recognize the dangers.

This approach has yielded us Icelandair's with fewer idiots therefore no baseless claims for lawsuit.

You see.. they fall into these boiling pools of mud. Problem solved.

So 12 days of quarantine? Sounds expensive.

Ashes and sunlight are obstructing the current view, if you go a little back in the stream, you'll see what's happening.

About?! The 14th decimal place of latitude is worth ~0.15mm!