Here you can see photos from the Skaftá flood in August 2023.
Photo/Jónas Erlendsson
A small
Skaftá
glacial outburst flood began during the night before Sunday. This is confirmed by Sigríður
Magnea
Óskarsdóttir
, natural hazard specialist at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO), in a conversation with mbl.is.
“During the night before Sunday, the water level in the river began rising and continued to rise until midnight yesterday, but has remained fairly steady since,”
Óskarsdóttir
says.
She reports that the discharge is about 250 cubic
metres
per second, which is slightly higher than the peak summer flow.
A statement from the IMO notes that the first signs of the flood were detected at the stream gauge on
Skaftá
at
Sveinstindur
, and that by last night the water level at
Kirkjubæjarklaustur
and
Eldvatn
had also begun to rise.
“This is not a large event as it stands, but it is too early to say whether the flood has reached its peak. We will give it today and possibly tomorrow before making that assessment,”
Óskarsdóttir
tells mbl.is.
She says some gas pollution has been detected in the river and urges people to be cautious in the area, though at present no infrastructure is considered to be at risk.
The IMO statement explains that it is not yet known from which cauldron (geothermal ice cauldron) the flood originates. Floods from the eastern cauldron are generally larger than those from the western one. The last
Skaftá
flood occurred in autumn last year and originated from the eastern cauldron; the western cauldron has not released a flood since autumn 2021.