Yeah, not at all compared to prior eruptions. Uplift looked slower than before, too, so it wasn't really expected to erupt in November. But here we are... lol.
For each of the prior eruptions, there needed to be more uplift with each eruption (denoted by orange stars I added). But this eruption happened with less uplift than the prior eruption. So, something was a bit different this time around.
This is in northeast Iceland. And yep, while it is somewhat rare, we see these features around the world. Devil's Tower in Wyoming, USA is arguably my favorite example I've seen yet!
Nice! I saw similar basalt columns in western Iceland on the Snaefelness peninsula. Closer to home, we have great basalt in New Mexico, where Cabezon peak is our own little Devil’s Tower
I bet this is where Prof Dreamy Eyes, oops, I mean Prof Brian Cox, filmed the first episode of his recent Solar System series. It was about volcanoes, here and on other planets / satellites, and those are volcano “tubes”, aren’t they? Just gorgeous!
This is columnar basalt. While they are both igneous formations, these are different from lava tubes. These columns form from the cooling and contracting/cracking of lava.
Nice Basalt columns! Got to see some real interesting ones at Devil's Postpile National Monument up near Mammoth Lakes back in August of 2017. My sister-in-law is quite the rock hound!
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