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Hawaii Volcano Kilauea

Merry Christmas!

Such a show-off, this volcano! :cool: Here's the update, with links to USGS livestream, and also one from Afar TV the USGS livestream, a few hours ago, with HVO director Ken Hon (edit because Afar TV is running the USGS stream now).

Two Pineapples were on it, with some spectacular views of the fountains, and they just wrapped up their livestream.

Glad it's in the summit caldera. They report no activity elsewhere (magmatic underground movement) but the recent eruption outside the summit indicates that Kilauea may have some surprises in store at some future point, volcanic and/or seismic -- but this moment is both beautiful and harmless (apart from vog).
 
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Surprise #1: If the Two Pineapples livestream commenters are correct, the fountains suddenly stopped and lava is draining back into the vents!

FWIW, this happened during the Kilauea Iki eruption in 1959, and HVO did say that Kilauea Iki showed deformation today, too (it's a smaller crater near what used to be Halemaumau until the caldera collapse in 2018). I have no idea if that's related or just coincidental, but at Kilauea Madam Pele does sometimes take back what she has given.

Question is, will it come back to the surface, and if so, where? The summit caldera is most likely, but we'll see.
 
Just out from HVO: The eruption is paused, more info tomorrow unless something changes overnight.
 
From HVO about half an hour ago:

Renewed, low-level eruption of sluggish lava that began around 8 a.m. this morning, and around 11:00 a.m. today more gas-rich lava began reaching the surface causing fountaining to become more vigorous. Increased fountaining accompanied by increasing tremor and the resumption of summit deflation mark the onset of a second eruptive episode. Repressurization of the summit appears to be forcing, degassed lava that drained back into the vents last night back to the surface.
Click to expand...

This layperson's impression is that the aftermath of the 2018 eruption, especially the caldera collapse but also that 7-pointer during the eruption, changed a lot of the well-worn paths inside that magma had been following during the prior decades-long eruption at Pu'u O'o and the summit.

Now, perhaps, enough new magma has come up from depth and accumulated in Kilauea's reservoirs to muscle through some of the wreckage -- the volume of lava and speed with which it spread yesterday, as Ken Hon showed at the start of that video, were amazing.

That stored up burst is over now, but apparently the summit caldera still presents the easiest way to erupt. ? if it will continue long, and the other options that volcanologists mentioned in that post of theirs included earlier in this thread -- here it is again -- are probably still on the table, even though they apply outside the summit area.

If it hadn't restarted today, and given the volume and muscle at the start, I worried about a big quake. The 7-pointer in 2018, volcanologists said, was from so much magma moving through the Lower East Rift Zone. If there now was so much of it on the move again...

Well, some of it, at least, has found a route to the surface. Hope it continues and gives us great viewing over the holidays.
 
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Paused again.
 
There was a close call while the eruption was on and had an audience -- a toddler almost went over the caldera cliff but was caught just in time. The whole family apparently had gone past the safety barriers.

There is some light down there at night on cams but that's probably the spattering that HVO mentioned in Thursday's update.

I chose the "next year" option on the Two Pineapples YouTube poll about when Round Three might start (if it comes) -- would be glad to be wrong, though. Hint, hint, Madam Pele! ;)
 
Aha! It HAS resumed, per USGS Volcanoes on Facebook. They hadn't done a new update yet on the main HVO Kilauea page, that's all.
 
On the 29th, per USGS, interferometry showed a vertical dike:



Fingers crossed that this turns out to be a stable conduit and lasts -- those fountaind are gorgeous!
 
Kilauea is erupting, per the HVO updates; it's paused, not ended.

This Volcano Watch article explains why we see a mild glow where the fountains were: the lava is still there but lacks the oomph to move out.

Hawaiian Volcano Observatory staff conducted a monitoring overflight of Kīlauea summit the morning of Jan. 10. Lava was visible within both the north and south vents that have been active during the Kīlauea summit eruption that began during the early morning of Dec. 23, 2024. Although the eruption has remained paused since the evening of Jan. 3, glow has persisted from these inactive vents on the southwest part of the caldera floor. (Photo Courtesy: U.S. Geological Survey/L. DeSmither)

-- Article and update from Big Island Now
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Yay, Round 4!
 
Kilauea snuck a Round 6 past us and it's over!

Since I read up a bit on this area for the Decade Volcanoes eBook (Mauna Loa, chapter draft here), I'll take a stab at explaining this weird behavior. (Sources in blog links/available on request.)

<Layperson speculation>A little geography: Kilauea is the youngest Hawaiian volcano above sea level and it sits on Mauna Loa's flank.

Mauna Loa might be transitioning into old age, say the boffins, to be replaced eventually by a humungous Kilauea just as enormous Mauna Loa replaced earlier giants that slowly trundled away from the hotspot while riding the Pacific Ocean tectonic plate. This is such a long-term process, though, that it probably doesn't matter to Kilauea's current eruption dynamics.

There is a baby in this family -- a submarine volcano offshore, a little closer to the hotspot, that still has a thousand feet or more to grow before it rises above the waves, and it's active, too.

In between that seamount and Kilauea, onshore, is a center of seismic activity at Pahala. Why? The experts are still working on it.

Plumbing: Lava apparently is not scarce here, but it must be pressurized (and gassy) to erupt. The fountaining shows that gas is no problem. Pressure seems to be the issue.

This layperson's understanding is that the plumbing systems of Kilauea and Mauna Loa are separate but influence each other through stress gradients. These are HUGE volcanoes, and at least in part they're riding on an active fault that also acts as a backstop; all that weight as well as the movement of magmatic fluids, etc., in various cracks and sills (especially against a backstop) must make for very complex and changing stresses all around.

That could be playing a big role in the intermittent fountaining at Kilauea. Also, scientists aren't sure exactly what's going on at Pahala, AFAIK, although it is probably due in part to a magma body, but whatever it is probably is a contributing factor underground, too.

Finally, not only did Kilauea's summit caldera collapse only six years ago (not even a blink in geologic time) but also Mauna Loa is still in recovery from its recent eruption and so is inflating slowly, too.

In addition to complex interactions hidden from the boffins by miles of rock, many "faucets" are open, reducing pressure in the plumbing system. And only so much magma is available from the reservoirs at any given time because resupply from the mantle operates at geologic-time speed.

Geesh -- with all that going on, it probably would be surprising if Kilauea did have a stable, long-lived eruption right now! </Layperson speculation>
 
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YES!
 
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