Looks as active as ever now, 1AM Hawaii time.
As you’ve all probably noticed, the eruption stopped on Sat 9/16. Here’s the official post-game summary:
They’ve cut back to the crater, but I don’t see any earthquakes there in the last couple of days. I am seeing a lot of seismic activity to the south and west, by the sea. I wonder if a new tube is opening up.
It’s easy enough to keep track of when an eruption is imminent - I regularly monitor the USGS update page. They go to a daily update whenever things start to get interesting, and drop to a once-a-week report when things are quiet. That’s how I knew this eruption was coming.
It’s impossible to say with certainty what happens next - I’ll continue to monitor and when/if things heat up again, literally and figuratively, I’ll go back to staring at the webcams.
As long as you tell us when to start staring at them too. Please!!!11!
Gladly!
Something is going on. I count about 45 shallow (0-2 miles) earthquakes on the slope just south of Kilauea’s crater in the last 24 hours.
You’re right, USGS is noting some new activity and has returned to daily updates (they were only doing weekly updates while nothing much was happening). Hopefully a little more entertainment is in store.
Unfortunately, I do not see any USGS cameras in the area.
I check it almost every day. When it’s doing anything at all it’s much cooler looking at night. Sometimes it’s not on, other times it looks like rain or snow is on the lens. Birds can be seen flying over the crater too. It’s gonna blow someday.
Another five in the last two hours all magnitude 1.7 or greater. The deepest is at 2.9 miles.
Kilauea isn’t really a “gonna blow” kind of volcano.
Yes, it can erupt and erupt lots and erupt long. And inexorably drip lava all down the side of the cone and all over towns and forests and everything. And perhaps snarl air travel to/from the island for days and maybe weeks.
But if you’re imagining an island-shattering Kablooey, not gonna happen. The lava is the wrong chemistry for Kablooey-ing.
Hawaiian magma/ lava has a very low silica content, meaning it’s runny and will not hold much gas. The result is an eruption with lots of cool lava fountains and rivers, not explosions and pyroclasttic flows.
So why does high silica magma cause big kablooeies?
As I understand it, it’s more viscous. Gooey, bordering on chunky. It can’t release gases readily, so pressure builds up behind it. Imagine a squeeze bottle of ketchup with partially dried, goopy ketchup built up around the nozzle. When you squeeze it, and nothing comes out, you squeeze harder–then what happens?
Now scale that up to a ketchup bottle the size of a mountain. If the nozzle is plugged up with enough goopy ketchup, the sides of the bottle will pop before the spicy tomato purée can escape.
A volcano blowing it’s top doesn’t have to be another Krakatoa or Mt. St. Helen. Lots of steam, smoke, and lava are good enough.
@Balance isn’t wrong, but it’s more like a Mentos Pepsi fountain effect.
The gooier high silica magma can hold a lot of gas under great pressure. Once the volcano’s “lid” finally can’t hold the pressure versus a magma upwelling, the lid fails, some magma gets out, the pressure drops, the rest of the magma rapidly expands to a much larger volume and it all wants to come out right now. Which tears the existing cone open somehow and you get a Mt. St. Helens or Krakatoa event. The intro paragraphs here are a good start into the details
Whoa - ten in the last two hours, all between magnitude 1.8 and 2.1. One is right near the crater.
Fuzzy image for the last 10 hours.
Normal camera focus and behavior now. But I think it’s a different camera with a different look angle at a different part of the caldera that we’ve had for the last couple of months. Definitely a different view than the cam that had a ringside seat for the September eruption.
Still seeing nothing exciting beyond a bit of steam from spots on the crater floor.