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The Halem’auma’u crater, inside Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island, has been steaming and filling with lava for a couple of years. I last saw it like this in 2016 when it was steaming and glowing at night, but not flowing outside of the rim.
A few months ago, a geological event below the crust caused the lava to rise to the top. Within a couple of weeks, the crater filled to the top, until it reached a pressure point and collapsed, not unlike a bubble in a boiling saucepan. The back pressure pushed lava away from the crater underneath the crust, pushing the lava to the surface, creating 33 lengthy cracks called fissures.
From the fissures, some lava that was released was only a’a or rocky, jagged, slowly creeping lava - not the liquid flows we typically think of.
From other fissure, including the most dramatic Fissure 8, more fast moving, molten lava, has been flowing since about May 8. 29,000 gallons per second is flowing out of this fissure:
From my helicopter flight, taken from a significant distance:
The morning one awakens to discover lakefront property in the backyard.
Map of the affected area. The red indicates current open fissure flows, the coral color indicates very recent flow areas. Look for the small red "8" on the map, which represents the fissure from which all the photos are taken.
So many acres of land are forming, and lakes and other features lost, that maps will have to be redrawn.
It's been an incredible experience keeping an eye on this volcano for the last 30 years.
Thanks, LD. There is something very healthy about being reminded that we are standing atop nothing more than a very thin, delicate film on this planet.
We like to think that everything around us - sun, crust, climate - are stable, but it wouldn't take much...
While the news is mostly about the lava, the ash and smoke really is making a voggy mess of the air quality. A massive increase in particulate matter is forming a proportionate increase in clouds that are yielding record rainfall amounts for the island this year. The ash layer is visible from the Big Island all the way to Maui and beyond.