Kilauea Eruption 12/23/24

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

It’s going strong, noticeably higher and wider than 15 minutes ago.  Might be the largest yet…

OMG, it’s huge, I’ve never seen fountains so tall, arching from right to left, way over the height of the crater wall, 1000-1200 in height???

People in Volcano House and along the overlook are cheering and whooping …

People walk in from the parking lot, see the fountains through the window - - and run outside through the back door shouting “oh my god!”

This is unbelievable.  The second fountain is as high as the crater wall.  The largest gets bigger and bigger.  And here I thought I was just getting a pizza and beer for dinner

[kalianna]

Wow! Look at the tephra coming out of that thing.

[Punatang]

Simply spectacular.  I have no idea how high Edge but I've never see it like this.

[MarkD]

What is so striking about today's footage was the period where the fountain was excluding from a relatively small hole...shown at about 1:30:00 of the video.  Never seen that before.  Amazing!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Some comments about the recent eruption episode from HVO:

Episode 23 lava fountains erupted continuously for 6 hours and reached heights of about 1,150 feet. These were the highest lava fountains observed so far during the current eruption.

Strong glow visible in the north and south vents and summit region inflation since the end of Episode 23 suggests another episode is possible.

https://bigislandnow.com/2025/05/30/volc...fications/

[MyManao]

So, I’ve been wondering, how does the current phase of episodic eruptions go from the current pattern of activity to..? How does it end? What follows?

And then yesterday morning, early, there was a shallow (0.5 miles) 3.2 magnitude earthquake located right under the vent site which brought back memories of the day Puu Oo changed from its first few years of episodic high fountains to the low level continuous eruption that went on for years..

I was up on Puu Oo the day it switched from its high volume high fountains episodic phase to what turned out to be decades of continuous low level effusion. A small group of us were out at the eruption site camping up at the vent for 3 days already as the conduct was full to it’s brim with lots of spattering and little spillovers happening, just like we see the beginning of a phase at Halemaumau now. And, instead of the little spillovers evolving into larger and eventually a full blown eruption, all of a sudden, like out of the blue, the magma column literally vanished, along with a small seismic event and a black puff of ash that rose from the vent.

I was in touch with HVO via radio, and was immediately encouraged to get off of Puu Oo and as we descended the cone, keep in mind Puu Oo was big, and the vent itself was over 500 feet higher than the pre-eruptive ground, and as we ran down it’s steep tephra surface, on its west side, the ground before us, off the cone between Puu Oo and Napau Crater opened up and a half mile long fissure erupted. This quickly died down, and by the next day it was over. The following day a very small eruption began at what was to become Kupaianaha.

Upon review what is believed to have happened is that the extension of the conduit from it’s preemptive height to what became a pipe extending the vent 500 feet higher, and as such holding that much more magma, and all of it weighing more and more as the conduit grew, eventually created a scenario where the weight of the magma was too great and instead of more eruptions the pipe itself broke, and magma rushed in to fill the new voids created and found it’s way to the surface through them instead of the standing vent pipe.

In other words, it took a catastrophic failure of the system for the eruptions to change. But why, after the failure, did high fountains not resume? What about the change was so dynamic that now the magma could flow to the surface without interruption, and without being able to accumulate all the volatility that was the hallmark of the earlier phases?

In any event I’ve been wondering.. and then woke up yesterday to a change in the tilt, which began at the point of the earthquake, and remained flat for a few hours before resuming its otherwise inflating profile. Not to say this is solid evidence of anything at the moment, but rather here is a change, marked by a seismic event.. and those are the memories it excited. And, besides the period of no inflation that followed the earthquake, nothing else seemed to have changed. The vent continued to show signs of being full and had several spattering events after the earthquake as before..

But it did excite that memory, and because of it I wondered, just how high have the vents extended themselves since the onset of this series of eruptions? So, to that point, here is a set of images.. both taken from HVO’s S2cam. One is from the beginning of this series, taken on 12/28/2024 just after the camera was realigned to put the vents in focus, and the other from yesterday. Obviously the camera angle has changed a bit but you can align them by recognizing specific features in the caldera wall around the activity. To me, it looks like the eruptions have extended the ground surface about one third of the way up the caldera wall since all this began.

[kalianna]

What an adventure that must have been! Time will tell...

[MyManao]

What an adventure that must have been!  Time will tell...

Yes, one of the highlights of my life. And, interestingly, it seems as though our current vent isn't showing signs of its demise.. yet.

In fact, the eruption seems to be maturing.. in that I mean the vent is getting more efficient at delivering magma to the surface. It appears larger in diameter and the eruptions produce more in a shorter period of time.. 

And, it seems, especially in this last inflation cycle, that the ability of the mountain to recharge the shallow chamber from which this is all being staged is more efficient, and able to erupt magma at a faster clip than in earlier cycles. Here are two plots to demonstrate this.

The first is the last three months of the summit tilt showing the shallower inflation preceding an eruption and the rapid deflation of the eruption cycles.. over and over.



I put this here to draw attention to the last, latest, inflation part of the cycle and how, when compared to previous cycles, steep this one is. Steep being more inflation over a shorter period of time.

Also, to further illustrate the same from a different perspective, here is the summit GPS line length across the caldera, with each data point (small circles) representing a day, for the last year. 



And although this is a longer period of time, you can clearly see the eruption cycle's effect on the line’s length as the magma accumulates and is erupted, over and over, on the right side, the most recent part of the data stream. And here the last cycle's rapid inflation is clearly seen as the distance between the circles in this one inflation cycle as compared to all the previous inflations.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Another huge eruption:

https://www.youtube.com/live/BqmpkUdMtyA...N1z1socYC2

[MarkD]

Traffic heading to the park from Hilo was backed up at 4 p.m. today before the road going to Cooper Center in Volcano, about 2 miles from park entrance.  A very slow stop and go.  Pity anyone who was going to Kau or beyond -- or who lives near the Volcano golf course.  This traffic obstruction might happen more and more, with our recurring eruptions.  

Time to start discussing expanding this road's right shoulder for a long stretch before the park entrance.    Ergo when traffic into the park is locked up, people heading south on the sole access to Kau can pass on the right.  Planning and permitting for this will take 3-4 years, so discussion might as well start soon.