A Kilauea Thanksgiving
Hello, my lovely people! It’s American Thanksgiving, and hopefully most of us subject to it have survived without too many kitchen mishaps and family feuds. If you’ve spent it alone, I hope you’ve had a lovely bit of solitude. And for those of you who, like me, worked the day, I hope everything went as smoothly as a holiday can.
Let us give thanks to Tūtū Pele, who has provided us with this lovely and relatively safe ongoing eruption in her home on Kilauea volcano:
The last 24 hours of activity at Kilauea, as seen by the thermal webcam. Credit: USGS
A few days ago, I noticed a fairly large although fleeting increase in the output of lava from the summit vent. According to the USGS, it lasted just a few hours, and then all went back to the current normal. But it sure did look neat in the summit webcams! I grabbed the relevant bits and slowed them down for you.
Here ’tis in the thermal cam:
Lava effuses from Kilauea’s current vent on 11/22. Credit: USGS/Dana Hunter
I love how it just slops over the top at the end!
Here’s what it looked like in the real-color KW cam:
Time-lapse from Kilauea’s KW webcam, showing the increase in effusion. Credit: USGS/Dana Hunter
It’s such a joy to watch this volcano build itself up. Pele is smoothing the rough edges left by the caldera collapse in 2018. She has a long way to go before the whole thing gets filled in, and she may stop once she’s reached a satisfactory level. She may decide to do some more work on the flanks soon, too.
This awesome diagram from the USGS shows just how much more lava will have to erupt to fill Halemaʻumaʻu crater. It’s really amazing seeing the pre-collapse profile! Credit: USGS
One thing for sure: it’s always a dynamic environment up on one of the world’s most active volcanoes!
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