Friday, January 1, 2021

Kilauea's Christmas gift

 

In case you don't follow the news of erupting volcanoes around the world, Hawaii's Kilauea decided to provide a Christmas gift of a summit eruption.   In the collapsed caldera (collapsed and deepened after the big flank eruption that ended about two years ago), vents opened on the side of the crater, and poured lava into the bottom, where there had been a lake of water.   That didn't last very long.

Since then, the lava lake has filled and deepened, to the point that the lower vents have been submerged, but are still pumping out lava, raising the level of the lake.  

The lake even has a floating island of solidified lava, which if I remember correctly was a feature of the famous Halemaumau lava lake described by Mark Twain more than a century ago.

If you want to see what happened, dial back the time machine in the Kilauea Photo and Video Chronology.

Here's a photograph from December 30;  one of the vents is still above the lake surface, spattering lava as the lake circulates.




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