Volcanic ash could feature on a car near you today

It could be appearing on screens all over Ireland this morning, but don't expect to be entertained. If it rained in your area last night, then your car could be coated with black dust today, courtesy of an Icelandic volcano.

The 1,491-metre Hekla volcano near Keflavik, about 150 km south-east of Reykjavik, was at its usual business last Saturday, erupting and discharging lava and throwing up tonnes of volcanic ash, which rose to between 10,000 and 15,000 ft.

The ash was carried to us on winds, and by yesterday afternoon the plume reached from Donegal to Belfast, according to Met Eireann, and was working its way south-eastward.

The service tracks such ash clouds, and it notified all airlines long before the plume arrived, although a forecaster said the plume was thin and would not threaten aircraft. Rain showers overnight could wash out the ash and bring it to earth, he added.

The dust is unlikely to cause any symptoms in asthma sufferers as the cloud is so thin and because it is mainly composed of non-reactive silicates.

Large amounts of the ash can cause breathing problems, ,as occurred after Mount St Helens erupted in May 1980, dumping several inches of ash over parts of Washington State in the western US, and cloaking New York in dense ash cloud for 24 hours.

Prof Chris Stillman, a volcanologist at Trinity College Dublin, said Hekla was a major volcano that had erupted fairly frequently over the last 10,000 years. Its dust has been found in Greenland ice cores and Ireland's bogs, he said. It blew its top in 1947, throwing ash up to 90,000 ft.

Compared to its dangerous cousins around the margins of the Pacific, however, it's in the ha'penny place.

Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted catastrophically in June 1991, kicking millions of tonnes of ash, dust and rock into the air. The resultant cloud was dense enough to knock out aircraft engines.

There will be no such drama associated with Hekla's dust cloud, and even if the black stuff is coating your car this morning, think of the advantages. If you haven't bothered to wash the car for a few weeks, just blame the dirt on the volcano.