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What are we looking at? >> i'm not sure. this is geology. this is to say an eruption in geologic terms is a blink of an eye, in human jet travel is huge inconvenience. i can understand why the authorities are playing it on the safe side. you get this ash in the engine, you could really get into problems. you lose two engines at once over a populated area. see, the thing in mount st. helens days, it's near seattle, near portland, oregon, but the wind literally blew it the other way. we had bumper stickers that said, don't come to washington state, we're on our way to you. ash blew all the way t...

Heavily. that area was like a severe dust storm. the big question for authorities, how much is a danger over northern europe given the economic problems it's having. of course you don't want to take a chance with an airplane, it is frustrating. that's going to be the discussion that's happening over the next few days. >> nbc's bob bazell, thank you, bob. going on five days since the ash cloud blanketed europe and the volcano is stillvillently erupting. joining me now bill nigh the science guy. how long could this go on? >> i will say a couple of weeks. i don't know if you remember mount st. he...

Based on volcanic dust, has happened before, campbell. >> that's very scary. finally, tom, when do they expect it to clear up? >> that's an excellent question. they still have all the traffic backed up here. all of the huge clouds out in the sides of the volcano, the stuff rushing down the side of it. here's what we know. when mount st. helens erupted in 1980 it spread 540 million tons of ash, so much that roads, schools, hospitals, power plants and airports all had to close. that went on for quite some time. this is smaller, but not very far away from this one is another volcano that often er...

Long-term regional or even global effects? what's the most important thing to know about an eruption to know whether it could be that severe? >> those eruptions were quite unusual, they were long-lived, went on for more than a year and erupted voluminous quantities of ash. this is much, much smaller, than those eruptions. several times smaller than the size of those eruptions. the most important parameter is really the duration of the eruption and how much lava and ash are emitted. >> is there any way to predict what the duration of this eruption will be and i guess more in practical terms whe...

Result erupted less than a cubic kilometer. mount st. helens was a tenth of that size. but they're monitoring it with a va rye at the of instruments. if it were to intensify or grow much larger or give signs it were going to intensify and grow much larger, they should see some signals of that. >> one last question for you just about your own experience. i know you've flown in planes around active value cane knows to view ash and gas plumes from volcanos when they're going off. we've got footage from the eruption in alaska in 2008. how hard is it to monitor a volcano in the air when the ash is ...