A volcano in Iceland is erupting for the fourth time in 3 months

GRINDAVIK, Iceland — A volcano in Iceland erupted Saturday night for the fourth time in three months, sending orange jets of lava into the night time sky.

Iceland’s Meteorological Workplace mentioned the eruption opened a fissure within the earth about 3 kilometers (nearly 2 miles) lengthy between Stóra-Skógfell and Hagafell mountains on the Reykjanes Peninsula.

The Met Workplace had warned for weeks that magma — semi-molten rock — was accumulating beneath the bottom, making an eruption seemingly.

A whole lot of individuals had been evacuated from the Blue Lagoon thermal spa, considered one of Iceland’s prime vacationer sights, when the eruption started, nationwide broadcaster RUV mentioned.

No flight disruptions had been reported at close by Keflavik, Iceland’s fundamental airport.

The eruption website is a couple of kilometers (miles) northeast of Grindavik, a coastal city of three,800 individuals about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, that was evacuated earlier than the preliminary eruption in December. A couple of residents who had returned to their properties had been evacuated once more Saturday.

Grindavik was evacuated in November when the Svartsengi volcanic system woke up after nearly 800 years with a sequence of earthquakes that opened massive cracks within the floor north of the city.

The volcano finally erupted on Dec. 18, sending lava flowing away from Grindavik. A second eruption that started on Jan. 14 despatched lava towards the city. Defensive partitions that had been bolstered after the primary eruption stopped a number of the stream, however a number of buildings had been consumed by the lava.

Each eruptions lasted solely a matter of days. A 3rd eruption started Feb. 8. It petered out inside hours, however not earlier than a river of lava engulfed a pipeline, chopping off warmth and sizzling water to 1000’s of individuals.

RUV quoted geophysicist Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson as saying that the most recent eruption is probably the most highly effective to date. The Met Workplace mentioned a number of the lava was flowing in direction of the defensive boundaries round Grindavik.

Iceland, which sits above a volcanic sizzling spot within the North Atlantic, sees common eruptions and is extremely skilled at coping with them. Probably the most disruptive in current instances was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed enormous clouds of ash into the ambiance and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.

No confirmed deaths have been reported from any of the current eruptions, however a workman was declared lacking after falling right into a fissure opened by the volcano.