Volcanic Ash Cloud Update

When Eyjafjallajoekull erupted last year, I thought it was quite funny and symbolic that loads of people were unable to fly. But I'm supposed to be going to Sweden next week and I'll actually be pretty pissed off I can't fly because of Grimsvotn. So I just wanted to explore the possible outcomes of this eruption on my flight to Sweden. This is probably going to be quite boring if you're not actually flying to Sweden with me but maybe you're going to Norway or somewhere similar and this may be slightly relevant, if not I don't care. As you can tell by this map (issued by the international aeroplane committee) it doesn't look likely that my flight path will be affected by the ash cloud.

However as promising as this news may seem, it is flights in Germany (marked as Deutschland on the map) that have been badly affected which is almost in my flight path and therefore slightly concerning. Many experts are saying that like years occurrence people are being far too cautious over this eruption; one BA plane flew straight through 'the red zone' apparently the primary advice is to avoid flying in visible ash, which is a lot easier than avoiding invisible ash. If some of you are unaware about the impact of volcanic ash clouds on planes the two main problem are, the particles get in the engines and clog them up. The second, a phenomenon known as natures sandblaster is that the pyroclastic particles travelling at high speed etch the windows of planes and reduce visibility. It is odd that two volcanoes have erupted in succession causing this damage to airlines, maybe we're just not very good at dealing with eruptions these days, airports close in Iceland all the time and it's fine. Eyja was also a relatively small eruption, however it was more the weather conditions that made the ash cloud so destructive, which is a factor that has made this one less so. It's probably all due to global warming, what did we blame stuff on before global warming, god? I don't really know what I'd rather have, obviously I'm not denying global warming, I'm not that much of a twat, but it's just a bit rational and unromantic. Maybe I need one of the children's books about global warming with a nice little story with a dragon or a volcano, up and coming post on the links between volcanoes and dragons.

I'll let you know how Sweden goes; hopefully I get there.