The Facebook Group for Volcanocafé has recently passed a milestone reaching 1000 members with Sean Whitley becoming #1000, so I have been asked to do a short post with some information about who we are and how we differ from the main VolcanoCafé site.
The group was officially announced by Carl on the 28th of September 2013, with Sissel and Lughduniense being announced as moderators of the group along with Carl himself, and the group has grown steadily over the intervening period. When it was noticed the Iceland might be heading towards a fairly spectacular eruption around Bárðarbunga, the need for a larger team of Facebook Dragons to deal with the inevitable traffic increase saw myself, Tyler Mannison and Nick Small added to the team.
Posted to the Facebook Group by Valdano Fabio and used with his kind permission.
We have a fairly active group with new posts and links constantly being added by the members and normally are adding an extra member or 2 every day. Most of the posts are links to other blogs and information around the web, with Vitton Georges (http://volcansvanuatueruptionsgb.blogspot.fr), Peter Webley (http://volcanodetect.blogspot.co.uk/) and René Goad (http://www.volcanoplanet.co.uk/) frequently posting their links to the group.
The other posts take the form of links to YouTube videos, to other scientific websites and we are sometimes lucky to have a few of the members add pictures that they have taken from living or working around the planets many majestic volcanoes.
Our membership varies from bloggers and scientists to professional vulcanologists and high school students and everything in between. Our members provide early news and reports of activity in their regions. With members such as Lillo Flamingo Beach, Turi Caggegi and Boris Behncke providing photos and information on Etna’s ever present rumblings, Carmen Morataya keeping us up to date with Guatemalan volcanoes, y muchas gracias por sus muy apreciadas publicaciones a José Mauricio Méndez Febles with a lot of posts from Avcan (Actualidad Volcánica de Canarias) and Olga Girina who provides us with news of Russian volcanoes.
Etna eruption 1/2/15 through the clouds.
Posted to the Facebook Group by Lillo Flamingo Beach and used with his kind permission
With a large and diverse group such as this it can be difficult to keep track of all the members who post regularly, whether it is a simple sharing of another groups’ posts or photos, or someone who takes the time to write out a little information or ask a question for our experts (of which we have a few) so I apologise if you feel you have contributed and have been overlooked.
We now look forward to our ever expanding membership and welcome each and every one with open arms and open minds (well, except those spammers!!!).
For new members we have a few simple rules:
- Play nice
- Use English where ever possible
- Be patient, not everyone has the same level of knowledge
- And credit authors/photographers whenever possible.
We have a fantastic community that we love interacting with and which we hope will continue to grow.
Hobbes
VolcanoCafé 
Just a nitpick from a customer.
If I have chosen your restaurant and gone through the drive through, and chosen the numbered menu item. Don’t be surprised if I am not extraordinarily happy if your pubescent dweeb at the window wants to get into a debate as to what the numbered item on your menu consists of. I did not pick your restaurant in order to have a philosophical debate about your menu, just give me what I picked and we will do a business transaction and you can make whatever markup you have set in place in your business model. If your staff can’t handle that, consider me gone, a lost sale. If I have to talk to the restaurant staff, I’ll choose some place where waitress is easy on the eyes and has a sunny demeanor. Not some enfeebled dimwit yammering through an intercom.
Does that make me a Curmudgeon? Probably. But it’s MY money. If you want me to spend some of it there, you will take this advice to heart. Remember that long lost axiom of business “The customer is always right.” Too many establishments seem to have forgotten that. When I encounter it, I go elsewhere.
… and in the case of a local Radio Shack™, I heckled him before I left.
Rest in the warm glow of knowing that the poor dweeb is 1) pubescent probably with terminal acne and b) will have peer pressure so he HAS to listen to the likes of Nirvana (see below especially for you) or worse some Rap stuff that is equally tuneless and soul destroyingly depressing ……..
Heh… interesting. 😛
Ya know, I never was fond of the prima donna Cobain. (my opinion, and I’m entitled to it) Butch Vig, the producer of Nevermind had issues with Cobain who was apparently psychotically averse to doing back masking. (singing along with yourself). Later, Vig hooked up with some other musicians and Edinburgh native Shirley Manson who didn’t have Cobain’s hang up about back masking. The other benefit is that Shirley Manson is a lot easier on the eyes.
I am not sure I would be that keen to clamber into the crater with all the “popping” going on along the dike!
The caption that was with the photo on the IMO website.
“From Holuhraun lava field 4 March 2015. The photo is taken from the central part of crater Baugur, view to the North along the crater. The encrusted surface of the lava lake has collapsed; its remains are now a course, black rubble at the bottom of the crater. Small vents of blueish gas can be seen sporadically at the crater floor. The crater rim on the right hand side gave way and and allowed an outlet onto the lava field beyond; the channel is about 50 m wide and 40 m deep”.
An M1 quake is about the energy equivalent of 15kg of TNT
Most of the quakes are less than an M1 and they are 9-10km down, so really not much to worry about…. but then again, curiosity killed the cat lol
I feel the same, but to see them walk where we all saw such powerful beauty not that long ago… wow. 🙂
It is fantastic eruption at Villarrika. This is one of Chile’s most active. 2005-2006 last eruption. Love it. It looks like the people there are taking pride in their fire mountain to some degree.
Screen grab of Mt Aso: http://oi58.tinypic.com/e1vd2.jpg
Source: http://www.data.jma.go.jp/svd/volcam/data/volc_img.php
See if that is displayed 😕
Villarrica is such wonderful landscape. Well worth doing a painting of.
I’m not into that right now. I haven’t painted a thing in 20+ years… other than a bedroom.
I’ve been thinking about fiddling around with it again, but do not want to deal with the incessant waiting while one layer of oil sets so that you can lay down the next layer. I had pondered going with acrylics, but never had the space to support working in oil and in acrylics. (and then there is the issue of how to get a translucent layer. It’s a piece of cake in oil) It’s been so long, I think I may have lost the knack for doing anything at all. My current (planned) project is to play around with casting. It’s pretty hard to do a landscape in cast silver.
Silverpoint is a possibility. I did a couple of items in silverpoint just to see what the media was like. Incredibly fine detail is possible. If any artists out there want to give it a try, lay down a base coat on your board in zinc-oxide (white) and after that fully cures, you can sketch and draw in metallic silver or gold. (and yes, copper is a more economical approach). Oddly enough, the only thing I really completed was of a dragon.
I do acrylics and use matboard. Haven’t done any 15 years. That eruption column, the shape and the trees really inspired me.
A sheet of matboard coated with a base of zinc oxide works quite well. At the time, I was using a sliver of silver solder shoved into a mechanical pencil. That at least afforded some comfort and control over it. Ya have to be careful because erasing is sort of out of the question.
I’ve done oil,acrylic,water, and a few others as well, I’ve done Pastels for the last couple of years this and mixed media is my favorite, you can do them at any time of the year and no worry about smell etc.do some work, put afix spray on it and come back to it ,
Today, was a goat-rope. Last night I flopped around in bed until around 4 am. Then I came to the conclusion that if I ever did manage to doze off, I would miss the two calls I had slated for the day, so, I got dressed and drove off into the fog. I tried to grab 20 minutes of power-nap at a rest area, but was unsuccessful. (Florida rest areas have armed security so it’s pretty safe there). I got to my destination, cleared it in 15 minutes, off to the second site. Took care of the configuration issues that the server operations center wanted done, got back near Pensacola just in time to get hit with massive torrential rain and wind blasting northward along the leading edge of the front. Got through that and saw low lying clouds hammering their way south. How that system did not make a tornado is beyond me. Temperature dropped 25 degrees crossing that squall line. Took a successful power nap after I got home and now that it’s chilly and I have a nice hot double espresso with milk-chocolate. Wouldn’t you know it, the dogs all want to go out and roam the yard… in the cold.
And yes, I am quite aware that this isn’t really what some of you would call “cold,” but for Florida, it is. When I started out this morning, it was a humid 25°C. Now it’s a dry 4°C with a stiff wind.
Something I grew quite fond of in France on liberty, were hot pressed sandwiches. When you’re three sheets to the wind, cold and walking back to the ship, nothing hits the spot quite like that hot toasted goodness. I know that panini are not native to France, but that is the very thing you need when you are chilled to the bone and hungry. The only really odd thing about them were that the “French fries” were shoved into the sandwich. But, when your half drunk, you don’t care. 😀
Our name for the sandwich was a “squashie.” (because it’s squashed on the grill)
‘Toasted sandwiches’ are popular in UK too! 🙂
I like spicy Italian at Subway. They’ll do that there. 🙂
French fries in a sandwich? Sounds like what we Brits call a “chip buttie”
Three sheets to the wind, cold, and needing to get back to the ship, we tended to not appreciate the finer nuances of various cultures other than it tasting good and satiating the hunger.
It took us forever to figure out how to order fries from the pier vendors in Spain… and when we saw the “waste fluid” truck riving away after having offloaded CHT, some of us (with a very limited Spanish vocabulary) were a bit concered that the only word we could understand on the labeling on the truck was “Agua”. We had a lot of fun telling each other that all they were going to do was strain it and bring it back. (and I am quite sure that the rest of the dialog was that it was waste water, but it was fun tweaking the less experienced among us.)
Your mention of the sandwich has given me a hankering for a sausage po-boy… and I have a link or two of Conecah smoked sausage in the freeze… and a grill just a waiting to cook something.
It’s 17°C, it’s Saturday, and I don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon. Game on.
Okay. I cheated. Grilled Shrimp and sausage. (woot!)
Mars Orbiter Mission Methane Sensor for Mars is at work
Is this for real? I notice that there is a slow but steady rise of the measurement in Bardarbunga. Over the last three days around 20 cm. Any thoughts on rebound of the plug, increase of pressure or input from below…
No, this is not real. Over the last weeks, the level has been very stable on average but there are day-to-day fluctuations. Over time it may well start to re-inflate, slowly, but that hasn’t begun yet
I noticed that too Harry. Looking at the lower plot (http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Bardarb/BARC/), it seems it is going up a tiny bit.
Question is: If it is rising, is that caldera floor or just the ice movement, slowly filling in the sink a bit that was caused by the subsidence.
Someone knows what the lowest altitude was, measured by the GPS?
Looking at the graph, it says height is 1870.5 meter now. Am I right when I say the 0.0 is exactly 1870.5 meters?
That would be odd, because the 0.0 at the left side is following the measurements of three days ago and thus is changing every update the graph makes.
Ah, I discoverd there is 1870.6 at the right side, that is the actual height, accuracy 0.1 meter. The numbers at the left side is indeed the height measured three days ago (looks like I am looking at this graph for the first time today, I know, but never noticed the height in meters before…)
To be sure about the height difference, one should know fluctuation on a larger period. So that’s why my question about the lowest altitude measured. 🙂
Two things on my mind. Could inflation occur and fill it up to prior levels before the eruption and cause nothing to happen?
I am also wondering if Bardarbunga itself is becoming a more busy volcano than it has in the historical past.
She’s had a few eruptions, albeit small, except for a VEI-6 in 1477.
Source: http://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=373030
Seems about on par with how it has been. Bard has been very active in the last 10,000 years. Also, the VEI-6 was the Veidivotn eruption, and most of the explosive component probably came from Torfajokull or phreatomagmatic eruptions from the fissure (albeit, triggered by Bardarbunga magma).
Well, it does seem to try to inflate. Judging on the GPS.
I think the chambers are now roughly at equilibrium with the amount of magma flowing in them and the amount of magma flowing towards Holuhraun where it apparently still finds some places to fill.
Unless there is a technical glitch she seems to have deflated:
I think that is just the effect of the weird drops at the beginning and end screwing up the chart. If you look at a more stable period at a 0.1 scale. It shows a bit of a slow breathing motion hovering around 1870 meters.
Except that it never makes sense to believe the line until a few hours have passed.
Harmonic tremor at Kreppuhraun since midday? http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/kre.gif . No expert but somethig seems to be going on near the Holuhraun rift
Don’t know. But this also looks livelier:
Just issues with the equipment. See how it looks on the drumplot, the signal is on and off creating the noise on this plot which averages the noise over 11 minutes, KRE is still broken and has been for weeks now.DJK is fixed since 8:00 and now the 11 minute plot is normal
Thank you Ian. Broken equipment! And here’s me thinking I was spotting something useful 🙂
As always, look at the scale. This is just a zoomed-in plot.
Is anyone else constantly getting trolled by that patch of snow on the volcano’s flank?
Looking at the small pictures on Iceland eruptions. I keep thinking its smoke.
No. Have you got an image?
http://weerstationlangerak.nl/bardarbunga/index.html
The webcam picture on the right.
Could just me being used to seeing smoke all the time there through.
There seems to be a sudden drop in the Bárðarbunga caldera / ice according to this: http://www.vedur.is/photos/volcanoes/barc_gps_3d_is.png
And it seems to have stopped to update on the height / level it is at to.
Anything going on?
Probably just the usual weather problems.
Is anyone else noticing all that white smoke coming from the lava field just on the right on Mila 2?
Sent an email to VC. Did you get it?
Me? Probably not unless it gets forwarded. Try my jason account, that should work. If not, I can send you my “super secret(not)” Gmail addy.
Don’t know your jason account.
You have mail. Maybe. (having a fight with spam filters on the mail server. It thinks Amazon is spam.) While training it, the server claims to have deposited my inbound mail to my account, but evidently it found another spool file to stick it in so I don’t see it. I have the admin chasing it down right now. Other mail is working fine.
Thank you.
Got it. Thanks!
It should be hot in a few minutes. 😀
🙂
New Post is up! Featured writer: KarenZ
https://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/15668/