El Hierro eruption

[Janet]

yes, at least the outline is visible on a clear day, and it's thrown into quite sharp silhouette at sunsets, particularly in the winter when the sun's further south.

On the very clearest of days I've made out lights there, but you can't really identify anything, and that's only happened about three times since we've been up here. Even on La Palma, particularly on clear summer evenings (sun more northerly) one can make out car lights moving along streets in a town ... it's that clear, even though it's so far away that detail is impossible.

That's not even possible with El Hierro. The barest outline, really, is all we can see of the north east coast (so the area involved at the moment, the south west, is not visible at all).

[Nova]

You'd see a ruddy big volcanic eruption though 

[Janet]

I bloody hope so!

[Michael]

I bloody hope so!

Just make sure you keep fresh batteries in your camera. 

[Janet]

Between 9.15 and 11am there were 15 earthquakes over 2 on the Richter scale, 13 indeed of them being over Richter 3, the strongest being 3.8. At 11 on the dot, a 4.1 was registered.

[Janet]

Involcan has released carbon dioxide readings, which are said to be greatly in excess of normal levels. Some 1,684 ± 72 tons of CO2 per day are currently being released from below El Hierro, a level even stronger than the first and second phases of the eruption last year.

[Janet]

The emergency services have just released this image of the area currently affected by the yellow alert.

[Janet]

Yet more calm followed by activity, and a calm-ish evening followed in the last hour and a half, by 10 earthquakes of Richter 3+, the strongest of which was 4.1. There have been 188 earthquakes today ... so far.

[Janet]

There were brief power failures in the west of El Hierro last night, with 64 earthquakes overnight: experts say that there are now so many quakes that IGN is now only listing the stronger ones, so the real number must be in the hundreds. The strongest so far (already) today is a 4.3, and deformation continues to increase which is thought itself now to be causing a separate series of tremors to that of the magma-based quakes under the sea. As at now, 9.30 am,  there are said to be strong quakes at a high rate.

[Janet]

Scientists say that the energy released since the start of this latest crisis has exceeded the total energy released during the initial part of the eruption throughout 2011. So far today, there have been 51 earthquakes over Richter 3, eight of them over R4. Naturally the public has felt the tremors. The strongest ones have also been felt on other islands.