Kīlauea Update, Saturday, July 21, 2018. It is really just all about the numbers?

Another relatively quiet morning here at Keaʻau ma uka.  Calm winds...just enough for lau ʻōlapa outside to do their kapalili (trembling) thing...and, (mostly) calm ground.  I seem to have developed the knack of being able to sleep through ʻōlaʻi in the mid-M3 range.  Slept all night, felt nothing.  Gotta wonder:  Is that good??

I sense, despite the clusters of ʻōlaʻi now and again, that Pelehonuamea and siblings are a tiny bit calmer.  Calm.  Is my repeating that word a mantra of sorts?  Mayhaps.  But then we see the Tilt for the last two days.  The instrument is in an underground vault near HVO and Uēkahuna:

Does it seem to you that the curve is flattening?  Even just a tiny bit?  It does to me.  But then I wonder about malfunctioning instruments.  I wonder, after more than two months, can that really be so?  I wonder, what if...And when I start wondering that, I consciously stop.  Because what good does it do?  To wonder?  Especially about that.

We observe, and in observing, we wonder.  The thing is, wondering is part of the curiosity of it all.  How are we to make sense of anything if we canʻt wonder?  Especially because, lacking x-ray vision or some magical insight, all we really have are instruments and observations and wonder, guiding us to some understanding of the workings of Pelehonuamea mā.  Pieces of the puzzle are slowly assembled, and while doing that we think and wonder.

OK.  Nuff with the Wonder.  Here, then, are some numbers extracted from the HVO Cooperator Report to Hawaiʻi County Civil Defense, of July 15, 2018.

Fissure 8 was born on May 5, 2018.  It wasnʻt till May 28 that Pele settled in and began her prolonged residence there.
The puʻu she built is 180 feet tall.
The estimated flux (amount of pele erupted) is 100 cubic meters per second.  Or 3,530 cubic feet per second, or 26,400 gallons per second...
Her māwae pele (lava channel) is 8 miles long, from the vent to where she debouches into the Pacific.
The ma uka 2.5 miles or so of the māwae sits 53 to 72 feet above the original ground surface.
In places, the braided māwae is 1,300 feet wide.
The amount of uahi ʻawa (SO2) being emitted at Keahialaka is more than 30,000 metric tons per day.  Four times the amount emitted from the lake in Halemaʻumaʻu.
At the coast, muliwai a Pele (the lava delta) is 3.7 miles wide and in places extends a half mile out from the original shoreline.
Hydrovolcanic explosions (water+lava) occur up to 325 feet offshore.

Wonder and think about the numbers presented above.

As of yesterday, pele paused about a quarter mile from the boat ramp at Pohoiki and Isaac Hale (huh-leh) Park.  The red house is the Hale family home.  The hump below [Take Pohoiki] is Waiapele (Kapoho Crater).  And some of the trees along the shore are old, gnarled kamani.  A favorite for the shimmery scintillating grain of its wood.

Yesterday, from HVO, A Scene, Just after Sunrise.  On the horizon:  Maunaloa and Maunakea...Looks like one of those old "Volcano School" paintings by Hitchcock or somebody.

And this morning, at Kaluapele, the vapors of hanging clouds and rising māhu (steam) intertwine and mingle.  

If we take time to be outside and pay attention (or if cannot, we nānā...look...at images), we see that despite calamity, worry, and fretting, There is Beauty All Around Us.

As always, with aloha,

BobbyC
maniniowali@gmail.com