Kīlauea Update, Wednesday, June 13, 2018, Oia mau nō-ish

Morning!  

First and most importantly, to the myriad workers out there helping us understand, cope, deal, figure out..."Mahalo" seems inadequate.  Sleep-deprived, anxious, hard working, dedicated, compassionate, any adjective seems inadequate too.  But we thank them however and whenever we can.  Mahalo piha to you folks.  

Itʻs a kākou thing.  Weʻre all in this together, in this time of seemingly endless "Oia mau nō":

oia mau nō
idiom. Same as ever, continuing the same, just the same

Was I really gone only a week?  Time was spent on stable ground on the northern part of the Island of Hawaiʻi.  Stable.  As in not shaking or trembling or quivering or rolling.  Stable.  As in when ALL your muscles can relax, and not be on semi-tense standby for the next howeverbig ʻōlaʻi.  But still... the quotidian creakings, the expansion-contraction pops of iron roof, and wind-gust-making window noises were all too reminiscent of what a house does when the ground moves, and yes... muscles and brain tensed.

Got home yesterday, and felt 6 quakes of various sizes between 145p or so, and 10p.  And then was awakened briefly by our 5-point-something this morning at 340.  And went back to sleep.  Itʻs like when get big rain pounding on the roof at night.  Not the paka-paka-paka of far apart fat drops of paka ua when itʻs snowing or hailing on the mountain, but the torrential drenchings we sometimes get.  If you cannot sleep in Volcano when get big rain, if no can sleep in Volcano when get choke ʻōlaʻi...

It seems we become inured to...jet noise when they fly overhead, traffic noise if we live close to a busy street, rain noise on iron roof, and the movements of the earth.  Survival.  Our brains figure out how to deal with all that noise.  But the complexities of emotion are just that.  Complex.  

Friends and family losing homes and property, the economic impact of the pele, our eyes not believing what weʻre seeing, itʻs all confusing, especially when so much happens in so short a time.

To me, the most [fill in your adjective(s) of choice to describe the indescribable] changes are those Pelehonuamea continues to make to her home, Halemaʻumaʻu... wow...from USGS HVO yesterday.  Wow...

wow...how can??? On the left, those faint curved lines at the upside-down "V" is the Halemaʻumaʻu parking lot.  How can???  The lua is 1,000 feet (One. Thousand. Feet.) deep.  It truly boggles the mind.  The image is on the HVO website, at

aerial of Halemaʻumaʻu 061218  Their caption describes the scene.

"How can?" is manifested by the manymanymany ʻōlaʻi weʻve felt and will continue to feel up here.  The Media, busy with other things, doesnʻt report on the process so much.  On what itʻs like to live up here not knowing...  Maybe because this is all so incomprehensible, who can explain it in terms that make sense to those not here?  Those for the last day, most too small to feel:

The subsidence of Halemaʻumaʻu will continue till it stops.  When Pele is satisfied.  When the tilt, still declining, levels off.  Those sharp verticals below are explo-offsets.

And again, the "explosions" are silent to our ears, and are in the infra-sound range.  The "earthquakes" associated with the "explosions" are actually ground movement caused by energy released during the ash emission, and are equivalent to the stated magnitude of the "earthquake", or exploquake as I have come to call them.  The shaking we actually feel is quite a bit less, thankfully, than what the magnitude would have you think we feel.  

Sure hope that makes at least a bit of sense.  If not, email me for clarification.  Or for follow up questions.  Below are the "Last 20" as of 615 or so this morning, including the "5.3".

I wanted to include the image below because it is pre-all-these-events.  Halemaʻumaʻu quietly degassing, a tidy circular lua on the floor of Kaluapele...TryLook above again...

Then for the 24 hours prior to 615a today.  I suppose all the orange dots below might be considered precursors to the M5.3, and the little red dots, the ones after.

Above, that vertical smudge of white near the bottom is fume emanating from Puʻuʻōʻō, pre-events.  Below, from USGS HVO, the empty lua of Puʻuʻōʻō.  Itʻs that pinkish color because the puʻu was built of layer upon layer of pōhāhā (tephra falling from the sky) and lava overflows.  This all started in early 1983, and the pele in the puʻu was baked by the heat of Pele that entire time.  The iron in the lava oxidized like metal does when it rusts, and turned that pinkish red.

In early morning light, F8 (the vent at Fissure 8) and the river of incandescent pele are clearly visible:

The thermal image below from USGS HVO, is another way of seeing the flows.  Hot.  Complex.  Amazing.  That 90 degree angle at Waiapele (Kapoho Crater) will always intrigue.  The flat grey flows were earlier in May, and the rectangularish area at the upper left is Nanawale Estates.  Pāhoa is just off the left edge of the image.

OK then.  Gotta get to Hilo.  More tomorrow.

Please...  If you have questions, feel free to email me at the address below.

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC

maniniowali@gmail.com