Words by

Owen Tyrie

Photo by

Art Bicnick

A grey mist which is believed to have come from Europe and Canada has covered the capital area today, RÚV reports.

“This is something of a mixed bag,” says meteorologist Óli Þór Árnason. “This air seems to have come from both Canada and Midwestern Europe. We do not know exactly why. In many places, the trees and leftover vegetation are burning in the spring. And then while we had a slow south-westerly night, it was probably also gas pollution from the eruption,” he says.

Don’t worry, it isn’t smog

He says that despite the fog, the air quality is fine. “At four and five o’clock today the values ​​were fairly high in Hvalfjörður, that is now probably explained by the eruption. The [air quality] meters here in Reykjavík are all pretty good. This is clearly a very fine mist that is over and we are getting rid of it, it is heading north and then it clears out into the sea and we will never see it again,” says Óli Þór.

Thanks Europe

Last weekend, fog in the capital area was traced to fires in Ukraine and Russia. Meteorologist Einar Sveinbjörnsson wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday that it could be seen by following the fog a week back in time:

“In the spring, thousands of fires are lit there at a similar time when moss is burned from animals and plant remains for sowing in farmers’ fields. This results in heavy smoke clouds, which can be seen, for example, by remote sensing. Probably these are visible remnants of the smoke that has come here most recently in the high-pressure area east of the country,” he wrote on Facebook.

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