Kīlauea Update, Monday, July 2, 2018, #60...Two months...

Really?  Two months???  Puʻuʻōʻō drained on Monday, April 30, starting at 2p or so.  It was raining that afternoon out on the East Rift, so geologists depended on instrumentation to figure out what was going on.

Two months...the blink of an eye?   Interminable?  Somewhere in between?  The lives of many completely disrupted, nearly 700 houses gone, Waiapele, fishponds, farmlands, nurseries, buried...under 10 square miles (6,400 acres) of fresh pele.  Ka Wahine ʻAi Honua (the earth-eating woman) has also created 520 acres of new land, new anchialine pools, new tide pools, new coves, new beaches of the blackest shattered-lava sand.  All new.  Oh.  And of course, new spatter ramparts, new māwae, new puʻu big and small.  And thatʻs only at and near the coast in Keahialaka and Kapoho and Mālama, Puna ma kai.  Kaluapele, the summit caldera of Kīlauea has been, and continues to be, utterly transformed.  Familiar features erased, swaths of land painted a pale greytan, and at the center of it all, an ever-growing Halemaʻumaʻu.  New kaulu (ledges), new encircling māwae, new places for māhu (steam or fume) to escape, new habitat for the still-present koaʻe kea, the pali-nesting white-tailed tropic birds we see now on new Live Webcam soaring and gliding through and above the newness of it all.  What amazing times and amazing experiences these are.

wow

And, lest we become too comfortable and cocky and self-assured, our most recent ʻōlaʻi ʻōniu pele came at 124a this morning.  34 hours after the last.  Not 20 hours or 24 hours as might have been "expected".  I awoke, acknowledged, and went right back to sleep.  And those who think it might be a good idea to open a viewing area somewhere close to The Action, maybe at the intersection of what used to be the Kapoho and Pohoiki Roads, please note the impressively overflowing channel of lava early this morning.  And what appear to be additional small vents just to the right of F8...hmmmmm

and a couple hours later, one can hardly tell anything is different:

About those ʻōlaʻi up here...

The one this morning at 124a was not, if we are to believe the image above (and why wouldnʻt we???), anywhere near Halemaʻumaʻu.  Yes, yes, yes, "near" is relative.  But note, please, the pattern of ʻōlaʻi.  North, East, Southeast, and West, too, of Ka Lua (the pit), Pelehonuamea expands her reach.  Not content to stay in the topographic caldera, that familiar pali-bound one we see, say, from Volcano house or from HVO or Jaggar Museum, sheʻs moving outward to the structural caldera with its often-buried caldera-bounding faults.  That diagonal line to the right of the right-most orange dot is one of those, but itʻs not buried.  The dark pit at the bottom of the line (near top right of white box) is the crater Puhimau.

Then thereʻs this below.  The base image was taken January 15, 2018, and yellow lines are new māwae.  You can make out the original Halemaʻumaʻu, Kīlauea iki and its trail at the right, Keanakakoʻi, the smaller pit near the bottom center, and 1974 and 1971 flows are the black area on the floor.

Posted July 1, 2018 on HVO website:

"The area of major subsidence has expanded east and south, and slightly west, of the main Halema‘uma‘u crater area. The large, red-shaded area east of Halema‘uma‘u is moving down within a scarp-bounded area, as seen in recent photographs of the summit. Some fractures have also formed to the east-northeast of the red-shaded area of accelerated motion, and also on the south caldera rim where parts of the caldera wall have slumped into the rapidly moving caldera floor below. The dark gray-shaded area within the red shaded area shows the region of most significant down dropping and is currently the deepest part of Kīlauea caldera."

And when the early morning sun casts an orange shadow on your wall, no need look outside to know that air quality is not the best.

Finally, today...thereʻs a chant, "He Kau no Hiʻiaka", which is remarkable for its apt descriptiveness of current events.  But.  It was composed a long long time ago.  Some may say the last time Pelehonuamea was this busy.  Between 1500 and 1800 AD.  Long time.

Fornander Volume 6, see page 545

I re-typed Fornander to make it easier to read, and also pulled out "Uwōlani", a CD by Hālau o Kekuhi, and included their version and translation.  It is said that not all knowledge is found in one school.  And note too that all typos are inexcusably mine.

Lots to consider this morning.  

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC