Kīlauea Update, Monday, July 9, 2018, Tilting (not at windmills)

slackish winds here there

steamfume lazily moving

tantalizing views

Always changing.  Always.  The winds, the rains, our moods, and that of Pelehonuamea too.

There are many different translations for the full name of the deity.  One is "Pele of the sacred earth".  Sheʻs the one in charge.  Studying her helps us make some sense of whatʻs going on at the moment, both at Kaluapele (lua=pit), and Keahialaka and Kapoho.

There are many specialities in the fields of geology and volcanology.  Some study how the physical pele behaves as she moves across her landscapes, others look at how she moves during ʻōlaʻi (earthquakes), some wonder about her breathing and the gases she emits, her temperature is checked often, and detailed analyses of her blood and body forms provide information too.  We try as best we can to make sense of what some deem extraordinary, and others view as "regular".  Just Pele doing her thing.

For me, all these comparisons to the body and its functioning helps me, and I hope you, make sense of it all.  All those numbers and big scientific terms we hear in a language we donʻt quite grasp can be perplexing.  

A study of great interest too is that of deformation.  Seeing how she swells and deflates, sometimes regularly, sometimes not, gives us another bit of insight to her inner workings.  

Itʻs all charted:

Up down UPPP Down UP downnnn

This is just one of the graphs on the Deformation page on the HVO website:

Deformation

For the past month, we can see the Tilt, as measured by recorders, in this case the blue line comes from an Electronic Tiltmeter at Uēkahuna, near the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) and the green (look good) line from a machine on the slope of Puʻuʻōʻō on the East Rift Zone.  

And what, you may ask, is this "Tilt"?  Itʻs how her inflation and deflation is measured.  Magma, the liquid pele, rises into Kīlauea from the hotspot (weʻll talk about that in the future.  Or, try google...) and causes the volcano to inflate or swell, just like blowing up a balloon.  Or our ʻōpū (belly) when we eat too much.  When the swelling gets to be too much, magma leaks out, erupts, and Kīlauea deflates.  The air is let out of the balloon.  Up down up down.

The blue line above is punctuated regularly by big sharp jumps.  Those are the collapse/explosion events, marked by the M5.3 (M=magnitude) ʻōlaʻi we feel and youʻve undoubtedly heard about.  Sometimes the tiltmeter is recalibrated and the line seems to get less sensitive, but the overall trend is downward.  Deflation.  Subsidence.  Of the floor of Kaluapele.  And the continued inward collapse of Halemaʻumaʻu.

Deflation, Subsidence, Sinking, Collapse, Decrease in Tilt.  All pretty much the same.  Magma is draining from beneath the floor of Kaluapele, the caldera, and heads down the East Rift Zone, helping feed the erupting pele in Keahialaka, the ahupuaʻa in which lies Leilani Estates.

How do we measure this Tilt?  In microradians.  Itʻs labeled on the left side of the graph above.  Itʻs teenyteeny tiny:  One Microradian = 0.000057295779513082 Degrees.  Really small.  I remember, I think, somebody saying if you have a steel bar 1 kilometer long and put a dime under one end, the angle created is a microradian.  TINY.  But when talking about and trying to understand the enormity of Kīlauea, or the many-times-more-massive Mauna Loa, a microradian may start to make sense.  I think I remember that 1 microradian is equal to 333,000 cubic meters of magma, times 150 microradians lost (at least?) from the chart above...boggling...

Dzurisin Koyanagi English 1984

Every little change in degree of Tilt, up or down, means something is happening inside the mountain.  Each specialist has their speciality, and they meet, talk, and try to understand.  

I really hope this made some sense.

Down on the coast, pele winds past Waiapele (Kapoho Crater).  I note the brown vegetation, but can see, I think, greens at the upper right.  All those gases emanating from pele are carried, most often, with our trade winds in the view above, from right to left.  Gases are not good.  For plants or for people.

And way off to the left is Kua O Ka La Public Charter School, and Ahalanui Pond.

Aerial Video: Kua O Ka La School and Ahalanui Pond

All our thoughts and prayers are with Susie Osborne mā (folks).

Below, the school, just ma uka of the pond.

And, at the lower left, pele slowly approaches..

As we await the next ʻōlaʻi ʻōniu pele resulting from collapse/explosion, Iʻll let you consider all this.

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC

Questions may be sent me directly:  maniniowali@gmail.com