For the last 48 hours around 217 earthquakes have been detected in south Tjörnes Fracture Zone. Largest earthquake so far had the magnitude of 3,2 with depth of 6,2 km. Current depth of the earthquakes taking place shows that this are nothing more than tectonic earthquakes. This is not a volcano related activity so far. I doubt that is going to change for now.
Earthquake activity in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. Copyright of this image belongs to Iceland Met Office.
New earthquake swarm also started south of the earthquake swarm that started on 12-Januar-2016. So far that earthquake swarm has remained small, but dense in the number of detected earthquakes. Both earthquake swarms are minor at the moment. The fault area that is moving moves 20mm/year in right hand move, the rift in this area is also 5mm/year. This earthquake swarm is also small, compared to an earthquake swarm that took place in 2013 along the same fault (article about it can be read here. Article about start of that earthquake swarm in 2013 can be found here). It is not possible to know if this earthquake swarm is going to escalate or not. Current activity doesn’t rule it out.
Weather notice
There is a good chance that what remains of hurricane Alex to hit Iceland next week if it goes that path. The weather system might miss Iceland but I don’t know at this point if that is going to happen. If the remains of the hurricane get to Iceland I’m going to write a weather warning if the weather forecast gets really bad.
This article has been updated at 15:26 UTC.