Last week on Tuesday, a farmer was (un)pleasantly surprised by a geyser in his yard, Vísir reports. An old borehole for hot water, that had not been useful for over thirty years, has turned into a geyser and has since erupted several times per hour at a height of approximately thirty meters.
“So I just quit and went for lunch – then there was a geyser!”
Near the town of Reykjavellir in Bláskógabyggð, landowner Hannes Sigurður Sigurðarson was looking for hot water around an old borehole that was originally drilled in 1947, to heat greenhouses in the area. The borehole has been blocked and out of use since 1990.
“There was a tiny bit of water. So I just quit and went for lunch. Then my wife says that there is a [water] eruption in the well,” Hannes says. In the beginning he thought that this could be a normal phenomenon, but then it turned out to be very unusual. Geologists stated that the well is so shallow that it should not be able to erupt with this force. In order to erupt to the reported height of thirty meters, the temperature of the water normally needs to be higher.
A new tourist attraction?
Hannes, the landowner, says, “Geologically this is unusual. This is a very strange, special case. Nobody expected this, not even geologists.” The latest geyser, without a name yet, is not far from the famous geysers, “Strokkur” and “The Great Geysir”. The farmer says he is thinking about allowing tourists to visit, but does not plan to compete with the “original” versions of his small geyser.
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