Icelandic Eruptions May Disrupt Air Traffic For Months

Icelandic Eruptions May Disrupt Air Traffic For Months

Ash from volcanic eruptions in Iceland has forced the cancellations of thousands of flights to and from Europe. Experts warn that the eruptions may last for months.

Canceled flights cost airlines about $200 million a day.

This is quite a fascinating story as it combines two of the world's most interesting topics: volcanology and flight cancellations.

However, the best part of the tale is the 5,466-foot volcano that is spewing flight-canceling ash into the sky is named Eyjafjallajokull.

Eyjafjallajokull is actually the volcano's name; my cat didn't just walk across my keyboard.

Eyjafjallajokull is so hard to pronounce its pronunciation key needs a pronunciation key.

Don't expect your local anchor person to say Eyjafjallajokull it might kill them.

By the way, Eyjafjallajokull means "island-mountains-glacier." It's just west of a large glacier called Mýrdalsjökull.

In my OLD age, I don't think I've ever seen a name like Eyjafjallajokull. It looks less like an actual name and more like 15 random Scrabble titles or a word jumble created by a mad linguist.

Eyjafjallajokull is just the tip of the iceberg. In the article I used for this blog entry, the following tongue-spraining, spellchecker-busting names were used: Armann Hoskuldsson, Gudmundur Gudmundsson, Omar Valdimarsson and Barry Grommett.

"Barry!" Those Icelanders have such weird names.