Photo Gallery Icelandic Eruption
A volcano under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland erupted for the second time in a month on Wednesday, sending up a plume of dust so tremendous that flights were cancelled in northern Europe.
By Thursday morning, all London flights had to be cancelled. There were also flight disruptions over the rest of Britain and Germany and across Scandinavia.
Volcanic ash disrupts air traffic because it clogs plane engines. In all, tens of thousands of people were stranded, including these passengers in Glasgow.
Manchester Airport: Nothing to do but wait.
A board in the Cologne-Bonn Airport shows cancelled flights to London airports. German national carrier Lufthansa announced that there would be no more flights to London's Heathrow airport after 12 noon on Thursday.
A monitor in an Icelandic Coast Guard plane shows Wednesday's ash plume. The volcano, under Iceland's fifth-largest glacier, lies southeast of Reykjavik.
By Thursday, the ash plume -- the large black swath southeast of Iceland -- had started moving towards the British Isles and the European continent.
The ash cloud disrupted flights over Oslo, Norway (pictured), starting Wednesday evening.
SAS planes stand on the tarmac at Oslo's Gardermoen airport Thursday after all flights were suspended.
Smoke and steam above the volcano under the Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland: Fine rock particles were ejected up to 11 kilometers (7 miles) into the atmosphere and drifted toward Scandinavia and Britain.
The volcanic eruption caused significant flooding in Iceland. Because parts of the glacier melted ...
... it set off a major flood that threatened to damage roads and bridges and forced hundreds of people to evacuate from a sparsely populated area.
Highway 1, the road that goes around Iceland, was cut off by the flood caused by the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull Glacier.
A man takes a picture of chunk of road washed away by eruption-related flooding. Wednesday's eruption was the second in less than a month at Eyjafjallajökull.
Evacuated children play cards on Wednesday in the Icelandic capital city, Reykjavik. Heavy flooding caused by the volcano eruption forced the evacuation of up to 800 people living in the vicinity of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.
