Kilauea Erupts! R.I.P. Kilauea Water Lake. Viva the Lava Lake!
Madam Pele awakened rather abruptly on the night of December 20th, 2020, and decided that water lake in her crater just had to go. Volcano goddesses remodel in a spectacular fashion.
Thermal webcam images show Kilauea’s water lake boiled off by the eruption. Credit: USGS
Lakes are temporary features, geologically speaking. Some lakes are more temporary than others. When a lake makes its home in the crater of an active volcano, its life can be very short indeed. And what takes months or years to create can take only hours to destroy.
Kilauea’s crater water lake existed for just over 16 months. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the lava lake had been, but it was beautiful and scientifically fascinating.
Kilauea’s crater lake in August of 2020. July 25th, 2019 – December 20th, 2020
Since there hadn’t been a water lake in Kilauea’s caldera in at least 200 years, this humble little pond was pretty exciting! It might have been inaccessible to humans, but HVO scientists were using all sorts of remote techniques to explore it. We still had a lot to learn. And, despite some recent unrest, most of us expected we’d have quite a bit more time to explore.
Pele had other ideas. With little fanfare, she began remodeling at around 9:30 pm Hawaii time. Fissures opened in the crater walls. Lavafalls cascaded down the steep slopes. Molten rock boiled away the water in a steam and ash plume that rose to 30,000 feet. Within a few hours, the water lake was completely gone.
A lot of outlets have told the story of the eruption so far. I’ll leave it to them for this week. Next week, we’ll say a proper farewell to Kilauea’s water lake, and explore the precursors to this eruption in more detail. By then, we’ll know if Pele will be ringing in 2021 with fireworks of her own, and have more information on the details of this newest eruption. This is a new era for Kilauea, and I can’t wait to take you there!
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