All About Ash

About 7 million airline passengers had been going nowhere slowly due to the volcanic ash plume from a volcano in Iceland that has all but closed air traffic in Europe since April 14.

But if those travelers have a Wi-Fi laptop computer and are stuck in an airport that offers wireless service, they are probably better informed than folks stuck on the Washington Beltway - all of whom, we know, keep their eyes on the road.

You can get The Big Picture from Radar Virtuel, which offers a nifty map of Europe that shows flights in real time -- with an ash cloud overlay.

The site graphically depicts what everyone who reads, watches or listens to the news knows: Northern Europe has less air traffic since the 1880s when Santos Dumont flew his airship around the Eiffel Tower.

You can get The Bigger Picture from NASA, which offers a variety of satellite shots of the plume and the Eyjafjallajökull cauldron from April 17 through Monday.

At no extra charge, NASA also throws in how to pronounce the name of the volcano: EYE-a-fyat-la-yu-goot. The Associated Press tells us it's "ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl." (Listen to this pronunciation and you decide.)

In any case, don't practice it while driving on the Beltway.

You can get Just The Facts from Eurocontrol, which coordinates air traffic control across the continent and offers four daily updates on how much European airspace is closed due to the volcanic ash cloud.

One of the latest updates shows air traffic control services are not being provided to civilian aircraft in the major part of European airspace. This includes Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, northern Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Switzerland, parts of Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Eurocontrol also provides a map of the ash cloud that shows it's not moving very far or very fast.

You can get your Bad Mozzarella Report from Bradley Klapper of the Associated Press, who did a great roundup of the economic impacts resulting from the near shutdown of European air traffic. He hit the high points such as the fact that air carriers are losing $200 million a day, but also took a look at other fallouts from the cloud. This includes hotels gouging stranded travelers $800 a night and Italian farmers facing losses of $14 million a day as mozzarella and fresh fruits risk going bad as they sit on tarmacs.