This volcano eruption won't delay your flight

Over the weekend, Iceland issued a red warning to the aviation industry as an alert that Bárðarbunga (good luck pronouncing that), a volcano beneath a glacier, would erupt. But by Sunday, the warning was downgraded to orange.

While the fear of an imminent eruption's subsided, the threat hasn't altogether disappeared. As the Associated Press points out, the volcano has experienced "thousands of earthquakes over the past week", including two that registered above 5.0 on the Richter scale, and an "eruption remained a possibility in coming days".

For travelers flying into European nations, this stirs memories of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption, when ash clouds grounded planes in Europe for close to a week, and affected nearly 10 million passengers at a cost of around $1.7 billion, Reuters notes. It's also worth mentioning that this was a Strombolian eruption, which is a real technical term, and not just what happens when marinara bursts out of your pizza pocket.

For now, it's just a waiting game to see if Bárðarbunga erupts anything more than a string of unpronounceable letters in its name. But even if it does, major delays seems far less likely.

"If there were to be a major eruption, it would not necessarily produce a high ash column, so the likelihood of interruption of trans-Atlantic and European air travel remains low," Open University geoscientist David Rothery told AP.

Anyone wanting to track potential eruptions can check out the Icelandic Met Office, which is offering daily updates on activity registering around the volcano. And aviation authority Eurocontrol in Brussels is providing airlines with up-to-date forecasts for potential travel changes.

But at present, it doesn't look like this volcano will be an ash hat by clouding up your travel plans.

Ryan Craggs is Thrillist's Travel Editor. He's never visited Iceland, but he did grow up outside Cleveland, which is mostly ice nine months a year. Follow him @ryanrcraggs.