Ash and plumes

by Hannie

People are saying that the skies are much clearer and more beautiful now that the planes aren’t in the sky. I partially agree with that: seeing no metal objects floating around our blue sky can sometimes be a downer. Especially as it is very rare to see blue skies here. However, as a child, I always used to love looking at the trails of steam coming out of the planes. Sometimes I’d see a trail, but no plane!
I guess that my first argument is probably more valid, and applies to more people? So I guess that wins my vote.

Although, two of my friends are stuck in countries: one is Greece and one is Spain. School starts in two days (on Wednesday), and this is our last week of school. Then our exams start on the 4th May…will they be back in time? Planes should be up and running again by then, but there are so many people wanting to get a ticket back home, will my friends be able to get a ticket in time? I think it’s more likely that they’ll miss the last week of school, rather than our exams, but that’s bad enough! My friends and I were having a little joke about it though: we are doing the International Baccalaureate, so it’s not a total fail if they don’t get back to England in time! It’s not international for no reason!

The reason why I wrote this post on this topic wasn’t for the reason of telling of my friends, but because of the extremely haunting picture on APOD today. It’s of the ash directly above the volcano in iceland, and it is very menacing:

Copyright: Marco Fulle. From APOD.

I’m surprised anyone would want to get that close to take the picture! Even though it is a stunning photo. It still scares me a bit though…
What do you guys think of this and this whole situation?