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Iceland has ‘high probability’ of a volcanic eruption

The country has been on alert for several days due to continuous earthquakes and the magma emerging from the Fagradalsfjall volcano, forcing the town of Grindavík to be evacuated.

Imagen de archivo del volcán Fagradaslfjall. Este volcán provocó, junto a 1.000 terremotos, que Islandia declarase el estado de emergencia.

Volcán Fagradaslfjall

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

Iceland remains on alert due to the "high probability" that the Fagradalsfjall volcano will erupt. The alert has lasted almost a month now after the continuous earthquakes and the magma that is nearing the earth's surface, which forced the town of Grindavík to be evacuated a few days ago.

However, the volcano has yet to erupt, but the country's Meteorological Office continues to issue warnings encouraging the population to be cautious. There has been a significant reduction in the number of earthquakes, which went from between 1,500 and 1,800 quakes per day to only 700 on Monday and 165 so far on Tuesday. This was stated by the government agency in a press release:

Since midnight on November 21th,165 earthquakes have been recorded related to the volcanic unrest, all below M2.0. This is considerably fewer than in the last few days when 1,500-1,800 earthquakes were recorded per day. It can be expected that the intense weather passing over the country has an impact on the sensitivity of the seismic monitoring system to detect the smallest earthquakes, making it difficult to assess whether the seismic activity is decreasing overall.

Icelandic Meteorological Office continues to urge caution

However, it warned, the measurements could be erroneous since the current weather conditions may be impeding the Meteorological Office’s estimate of the severity of the situation.

For this reason, authorities continued to ask for caution, and the 3,400 people who were evacuated from Grindavík are still prohibited from indefinitely returning to their homes. NBC has assured that the Icelandic Civil Protection Agency will allow evacuated residents to return to their homes, although, only for short periods of time to pick up their basic personal items until the danger passes.

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