The blue sky! Brightness but not yet warmth. Still a bit breezy, but doves coo and ʻapapane sing:
ʻApapane melodies
It just occurred to me that our dearly appreciated ʻapapane song is, in fact, a rare thing. And mahalo to Jack Jeffrey for his patience, discerning eyes, and generosity, for his wonder full photos of manu Hawaiʻi.
Maunaloa is ever-regal, today standing in clear cloudlessness:
And the HVO webcam on the Maunaloa Strip Road, a study in pastels, is also instructive:
Fume cloud more clearly defined, blown to the right (SW) and lying on the ground, courtesy of brisk NE tradewinds. The vegetation in the image is native shrubland; mostly pūkiawe and ʻaʻaliʻi, ʻōhelo, and grasses, with scattered ʻōhiʻa.
[[NOTE: I continued writing till the Sept82 part, then was looking for a bit of info on the HVO site and saw the following, incredibly beauteous image by FTrusdell, taken at 715a today! ]]
Lower slope of Maunaloa and caldera wall in golden morninglight...wow...Uēkahuna, the summit, with former Jaggar Museum and Hawaiian Volcano Observatory buildings on the skyline.
And at Halemaʻumaʻu a half hour later:
Her pāʻū (skirt) swirls around moku lana au, still adrift...lovely lovely... seen too in the sunrise image above...
Itʻs been noted in captions of HVO images and video, that the crust of lokopele "founders".
As in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and other languages, we understand that a word often has many different meanings. So it is with "founder". I first encountered foundering crustal plates of pele on September 26, 1982. [So specific, Robert! How you know?]... I happened to be working the 14-hour luaʻi pele, that morning at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park. I was first hired as an Interpreter for a short stint the previous Summer, and returned to grad school at Mānoa that Fall. I heard on the radio, the evening of September 25, that Pele had appeared, and so flew home the next morning to go work. Spent all day walking the edge of the flow and talking with visitors. Ten thousand people came up that day to nānā;
to observe Her work. The photo above, taken at 240p yesterday by CParcheta, is posted on the HVO site. The smoothish greysilver in the foreground is the September ʻ82 flow. Pele filled a depression on the caldera floor with a shallow pond during her short visit. When the fissure eruption ended, some lava drained back into the cracks and left the rough "bathtub" ring on the far side of the pond, and the jumble, lower left. Thatʻs where I was, walking back and forth all day. And...the best part: starting on the south side (left side of pic), thin plates of just-cooled crust would crack off and founder. Big slabs of crust would sink under the weight of molten lava as it rose up through cracks, flowed onto, and tilted the plates. All day long. As the accompanying VolcanoWatch describes, because of foundering and resurfacing, the pāhoehoe plain is satiny smooth, rather than ropy-textured.
If you look closely above, on the right-hand side of the 1982 pele, see the arcs? Then below:
Above, from Google Earth...itʻs the 1982 flow. See the series of big arcs, a grand design? I wonder if those are founder "scars" or textures? Hmmmm.
Obviously, for me, an indelibly memorable experience! THATʻS how I know...
Ahhhh. An excellent Sunday morning...
UPDATE.
Then TILT:
Then, A Month:
After the deflation at the beginning of the current eruption, in/out remains flattish...
and despite that, Pelehonuamea continues her work. Last night, from a cam in the HVO tower, an ʻōhiʻa silhouetted by her glow...
As always, with aloha,
BobbyC
maniniowali@gmail.com
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