Kīlauea Update, Monday, May 21, 2018...and Puna ma kai is aflame

I type and look at the date, and it doesnʻt seem to mean much.  Three weeks???  I seem to be getting settled into this new paradigm of unsettledness.  We donʻt know.  Which way will the winds blow?  Big ash emission, small ash emission, ???explosion???, steam, lava here there both, ocean entries, sulphur dioxide, hydrochloric acid, vog, laze, Peleʻs hair, wildfire, ʻōlaʻi of various sorts and intensities, sun, rain, mist?  We donʻt know.  We might pretend to know.  The media breathlessly reports what-la, and after decades, I donʻt pay them much mind.  Easier and more reliable for me to poke around the www and figure it out for myself.  And talk with and learn from patient friends more knowledgeable in some details than I.

And then I sigh...

There seems to be...Too Much...  Too much social media, too much uninformed reportage, too much rollercoaster emotion... and I live Up Here!  In an ʻōhiʻa and hāpuʻu rain forest, with apapane, and my volunteer ʻōlapa, now 15 or 20 feet tall, and for the first time, laden with fruit...and my new hale pahuwai, thanks to nephew and niece and their keiki, and right now bluesky morninglight.

And then I look at pictures of Down There!  Pretty much all I can say is Auē auē auē...  Of course itʻs not at all surprising that Pele is so busy there.  She has been for centuries.  But during short intermissions, mayhaps we believe that everything will be as it is.  Bucolic charm, and all that implies.  Then the stomping begins.  The hulihia of peoples lives.  Not that itʻs of any reassurance, but 1840, 1955, 1960, 1977...the "recent" pele, all were relatively of short duration.  Weeks, months, but not decades... Maybe we can pray that this will be similarly brief.

And now we live on edge...and try to make the best of it.

So.

Here at the summit of Kīlauea, steam and ash emanate alternately from Halemaʻumaʻu, with the occasional apparently silent explosion.  Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park remains closed.  Seismicity (ʻōlaʻi, earthquakes) is moderate.  Tradewinds blessedly (for us) blow, though Kaʻū folks are having to cope with ashfall.

from Volcano House cam this morning:  ashy steam.
Blue wedge at right is slope of Mauna Loa.

The spectacular shot below was taken yesterday, 052018, noonish.  Thanks, JC.  Highway 11 is the line (Volcano Village in clouds toward the left), over the the dark ʻaʻā, several-hundred-year-old Keʻāmoku flow from Mauna Loa.  Green are pastures on the lower slopes of MLOA.  Do I need to say that the vigorous ash cloud is rising from Halemaʻumaʻu, being blown by trades toward towns in the south part of the Kaʻū District?

Below is the ʻōlaʻi graphic from the Summit area this morning.  Didnʻt feel any of them.  Bluish grey at the bottom is the ocean, with the slight bulge of ʻĀpua point:

And down to Puna ma kai:

All those massive flows of ʻaʻā with pāhoehoe-ish channels, and pāhoehoe, and the bluish fume, and the bluewhitebrown smoke and white steam from the ocean entries, and every thing being buried...it boggles the mind.  Truly it does.

at dawn, so the fountains in Keahialaka (Leilani Estates) are visible.

LERZ (lower East Rift Zone) ʻōlaʻi.  No recent Reds.

There was a biggish to-do the news yesterday about the bottom of a māwae (lava channel or fissure) under a flow cracking, and the flow disappearing or being diverted.  The above is from Kamoamoa ma uka on March 6, 2011.  Kinda the same idea?  The base of Puʻuʻōʻō is off the top of the image.

And there are LOTS of images all over the place of lava and ocean entries, so I shanʻt include them here.
I was trying to add more Puʻuʻōʻō info here, but the tech doesnʻt seem to work.  Iʻll make a fresh, short Post for that.

OK then.  I need to get domestic and wash and hang clothes while the sun shines.

Till the morrow, as always, with aloha...

BobbyC