Dispatches from Volcano: Kīlauea Update, TUE, June 5, 2018, again in the morning

Eō Pelehonuamea!

What impressive works of all manner weʻve witnessed. Hard to absorb it all, much less make sense of it.

A NOTE: Iʻll post an update tomorrow morning, Wednesday the 6th, then will take a few days off. Back here, paha, by next Tuesday the 12th. Iʻve greatly appreciated the many comments from you folks. Thanks for participating.

And NOTE2: Try go look at Hawaiian Force in Hilo. Craig made a nicenice tee shirt commemorating the luaʻi pele.

OK...what to write???

At Keahialaka, her fountain continues to play, though seemingly a bit diminished, and we wonder... we browse again through Macdonaldʻs USGS Report of the 1955 eruption, and wonder... [again, the link:]

USGS 1955 Macdonald

Early morning, before the PGcam switched to color, so we can better see her fires, and know that the river still flows.

Then with better lighting, we see that the luaʻi pele seems a bit diminished. Yes, the new cone of pōhāhā (tephra) is bigger, but the height of the fountain is shorter too. We wonder...

and we review the duration of historic Lower East Rift Zone (LERZ) eruptions, and wonder, and wonder, and wonder... Pretty much all we can do. Wonder at the wonderment of it all. No sense ask "Why?", because the answer going be..."Because...".

And ʻōlaʻi for the last week are very infrequent at the LERZ:

The shore of Kapoho has been irrevocably altered. But but but some of the properties have been, for now, spared. The pele made substantial progress toward the deep sea because nearshore waters were very shallow. Sea level rise has been trumped (couldnʻt resist that one) by much more rapid and incremental coastal subsidence events because of the various workings of Pele. Please review RegMap 1777 of yesterday and examine notes written thereon.

The kīpuka above remains, so far. Itʻs the hilo-side extent of what used to be the community on the shore of "Champagne Pond", that body of tepid volcanically heated water. The slightly darker pele at the bottom and right, with the double-lined track is the 1960 flow. Yesterdays pele is the tannish still-smokesteaming at the left. The rise of Waiapele (Kapoho Cone) at the top.

On Registered Map 366 by Lyman, surveyed in 1880, we found "Waiapele" yesterday, middle of first full line of text:

a closeup of the text. "Aupuni Road" on map above, is "Government road" below:

Today, this puʻu is referred to variously as "Kapoho Crater", "Kapoho Cone", "Green Mountain", etc. What about using Waiapele?

And too, please see Peter Youngʻs info about this on his excellent blog:

"Kawaiopele" or "Waiapele", or...

Note that there are frequent inconsistencies, for various reasons, between "o-class" and "a-class" names. You ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi peoples are welcome to chime in. Please.

Pele lapping at the former loko wai. View more or less ma kai, active pele moving top to bottom:

And then after... And I ask again, How and Why the sharp right turn? A correspondent said he remembered seeing something that our late friend Ulu Garmon posted or said about the moʻo of the pond winning a battle with Pele. Not this time... Stay tuned for more info if it becomes available.

Both photos immediately above from Andrew Richard Hara a couple days ago. Mahalo piha for sharing.

Nuff at the shore...

Up here, another exploquake, a 5.5 at 432a, .9 miles deep. Relatively shallow. House rolled around a bit, but nothing major. Again, the magnitude scale seems to be off, but itʻs the bigger red dot at the left rim of Kaluapele. And if it really WAS a regular earthquake, the photos below might explain why.

So I was noodling around yesterday afternoon, looking kinda obsessively at webcams, and wondering...

Up at Kaluapele, it was a clear tradewindy afternoon. Very little lehu or māhu emitted from Halemaʻumaʻu, so I did a SaveAs at 540p. Strong trades are blowing light grey ash in the distance. What appears to be the rim of Halemaʻumaʻu, that dark wedge at the bottom, is in fact the rim. But. Itʻs sunk. And everything to its right, and disappearing behind the fat ʻōhiʻa branch, is...sunken. SUNKEN. We behold a brand new pali (cliff) or two, a sloping sunken block, amazing! Makes a few sections of broken pavement and a cracked terrace at Jaggar positively pale by comparison.

And I looked at it and looked at it and scratched my head and looked at it and tugged my beard and looked at it and...HOLY %#%@!!! Am I REALLY seeing what I think Iʻm seeing??? The ash-covered folds of lava dotted by mostly faya trees, and that tall, sharp, dark, fresh pali...

Then I rummaged through old files and found the below, from August 23, 2016. at 710a. Same tree. Same camera. Same photopoint. But see how flat and calm it is. Just above the (old) rim of Halemaʻumaʻu, above the big whitish spot, you can spy Crater Rim Drive, that grey line, headed up to the right, and through the caldera bounding fault toward the Southwest Rift Zone pullout. Remember that?

And I had to fuss with exposure a bit as best I could, and try crop so theyʻd kinda match as above.

And then I put them together on one sheet. The two photos are from the KIcam in the tower at HVO (Hawaiian Volcano Observatory), from a thankyou-for-foresight fixed point on the floor.