Attention World: Reykjavík is NOT Covered in Ash

We’ve been getting a number of concerned e-mails and phone calls from friends and family about the volcano in Iceland. This I’m used to – the Hekla eruption in 2000 prompted my father to call me to ask if they had a Red Cross here, and if everyone had enough food and blankets. The Hekla eruption, as many of you know, was pretty mild, but something about the word “volcano” – especially in regions of the world that don’t have them – tends to make people jumpy.

Take this article from CNN for example. Reading it, it’d be easy to surmise that Iceland has close the airports in the southwest – the international airport in Keflavík and the domestic one in Reykjavík – because the ash cloud is upon the capital now, and soon a black smog of death with smother us all in darkness and despair.
Well, the ash cloud technically is over the capital region, but the ash is reported to be so far in the atmosphere that it’s not likely to come snowing down on us. At the worst, scientists report, there may be a fine mist of ash that could be visible to the human eye. And actually, it was quite sunny for most of the morning and early afternoon.
The point is, we’re all doing fine here in Reykjavík. We live here, so we’d know.