Kilauea Eruption 12/23/24

[Iju]

Yes, there're Pele's hair and ash tephra on our catchment cover. I'm on 8th and Maku'u in HPP.

[MyManao]

..Disconnect your catchment in flow if needed.

And, lest anyone forgets, Pele's Hair is on par with fiberglass. In other words, it penetrates the skin and leaves splinters, and is very dangerous if inhaled. And, of course, the same holds true for pets and livestock. Handle with care, wear gloves, and if it is airborne, masks.

[HiloJulie]

It showered us in the Acres around 8 and E - it was more like Kehena Beach black sand than anything here. And the stuff MyManao says - but also - DO NOT use your windshield wipers to clean it off. It can shred them and/or scratch your windshield.

[Durian Fiend]

We were in the park hiking to Napau crater when it went off. The eruption was audible, not visible, until we got to Makaopuhi Crater. From there a huge plume of smoke was visible, no fountaining lava. After returning to our car a couple hours later we heard via text that the park had been closed. Chain of craters road, from a couple miles below Devastation parking lot all the way to the exit, was covered in debris. It looked like a gravel road rather than a paved one. There were a few cars parked here and there covered in rocks, etc. A front end loader was clearing highway 11 in both directions outside the park entrance. My MO was to get the heck out of there but we did catch a glimpse of the fountaining through the trees near Volcano golf course. Very impressive! My wife wanted to hit the Thai lunch plate there. I knew it would be closed but went along with the plan.
There were definitely people in the park within range of the eruption when all of the rocks were falling out of the sky. It's a minor miracle if no one got hurt. I guess we lucked out a bit in our timing. Neither the car or either of us suffered injury.

[Wao nahele kane]

From our 24.5' diameter (471.43Sf) catchment cover, i vacuumed 10.7 oz of ash and Pele's hair.

[kalianna]

I hadn't yet heard about the eruption and I went out to our back roof overhang and completely freaked out that we had a sudden huge termite infestation. Then I saw it mixed in with Pele's hair, read the notification and figured it out. We've never had that much debris before. Not much wind so I wonder why this episode is so tephra heavy.

[MyManao]

Not much wind so I wonder why this episode is so tephra heavy.

All the higher, vertically oriented, fountains are as 'tephra heavy" but only in certain conditions does it get carried aloft so high as to be transported by the higher winds, above the trades, that blow predominately to the east and thus rain down on Puna as it did today.

Normally, when the trades are dominate, the plume gets bent over and the rock gets carried west. Without the trades the erupting tephra can reach higher, break above the trades, and be transported to the east before falling down again.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Normally, when the trades are dominate, the plume gets bent over and the rock gets carried west.

If you look at the crater (less and less a crater after each eruption) the side where its erupting has built up significantly with lava and tephra, and there’s also now a hill beyond the crater wall, built up by tephra, higher and higher as the trades deposit the heaviest material there.

This has been quite a unique episode, for many reasons.

[HiloJulie]

It seems to have settled down. I hear they cancelled all flights in and out of Hilo this afternoon and tonight.

[MyManao]

It seems to have settled down.

It stopped around 7:30pm. Everything that's going to fall out of the sky has probably already fallen. Though Pele's Hair is pretty light so it's reasonable to imagine bits of it hitchhiking on the wind for a while..