Kilauea Volcano erupts

OK, to finish out the year, cue the earthquakes, tsunamis, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Why not...
 
Recall that for decades before the activity in 2018, the summit crater in Kilauea was in continuous eruption with a persistent lava lake - one of the few such in the world. I would say the return of lava to Halemaumau could be viewed as a return to normalcy rather than the latest in a chain of 2020 disasters.
 
Checkmite said:
Recall that for decades before the activity in 2018, the summit crater in Kilauea was in continuous eruption with a persistent lava lake - one of the few such in the world. I would say the return of lava to Halemaumau could be viewed as a return to normalcy rather than the latest in a chain of 2020 disasters.
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Most of that wasn't at the summit, but yeah, it had been erupting -- mostly at Pu'u O'o, I think, for more than 30 years. It kind of emptied itself out onto the Lower East Rift Zone in '18, but has been filling back up.
 
Trebuchet said:
Most of that wasn't at the summit, but yeah, it had been erupting -- mostly at Pu'u O'o, I think, for more than 30 years. It kind of emptied itself out onto the Lower East Rift Zone in '18, but has been filling back up.
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It had been erupting since 1984, if I remember right. I wasn't aware that it had actually stopped.

From what I understand, this eruption is basically within the crater. I was in the crater back in 06, I think (maybe it was 01).
 
Trebuchet said:
Most of that wasn't at the summit, but yeah, it had been erupting -- mostly at Pu'u O'o, I think, for more than 30 years.
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The persistent lava lake was entirely at the summit. That was a continuous eruption for as long as it existed.
 
Yeah, the Kilauea eruption that started in 1983 had several phases, during which it ran over several communities on the eastern side of the mountain, notably Kalapana. Its last hurrah was in late spring of 2018, when the lava lake in Kilauea drained, and shortly later re-emerged along the Lower SE Rift Zone; that was the one that opened fissures in the middle of Leilani Gardens and destroyed 700 homes by the time it petered out. It made Puna look like that movie Volcano, except that Tommy Lee Jones wasn't anywhere near.

The lava lake in the summit of Kilauea was a relatively recent feature from 2010 to 2018; most of the activity had taken place around Puu O'o. DH and I took a lava boat tour in the fall of 2016 and saw cascades of lava flowing into the ocean, which was plenty spectacular for me. Most of the local residents know that in the area downslope of Kilauea, you are living there at the sufferance of Madame Pele.
 
pgwenthold said:
It had been erupting since 1984, if I remember right. I wasn't aware that it had actually stopped.

From what I understand, this eruption is basically within the crater. I was in the crater back in 06, I think (maybe it was 01).
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My family and I visited Hawaii in 1989. I remember taking a tour in a little 10-seat airplane, the pilot flying low enough along the coast that we could look straight out the windows and watch the lava flowing into the ocean.
 
Some wit just posted footage of this with the "Hawaian CHristmas Song" in the background....
 
A little updoot for ya. The latest lava emission continues unabated so far.

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So just to be clear, lava is flowing from two vents in the side of the crater wall and down into the bottom where it has created a lava lake. This lava lake as of 8am local time this morning (Dec. 23) is roughly 156m deep, or a bit more than three times as deep as the water lake that it evicted. This present depth is an increase of 23m over the past day.

Observatory reports say that the lava lake is slowly circulating around the periphery but is stagnant in the middle, resulting in the more-solidified center that is evident in the photos.
 
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