Dispatches from Volcano: Tuesday morning, October 5, 2021. Her work continues...

Our summer-like weathers continue, with clear skies, breezy trades, and an assortment of clouds overhead to lend perspective to scenes. With the able assistance of a friend, I was able to walk out to a viewpoint, near Keanakākoʻi, on the rim of Kaluapele. Loathe as I am to ask for assistance (that independence thing), without kōkua from others, I wouldnʻt get to see...

Note the orange rope, placed there for Visitor Safety. The ground is liberally sprinkled with cinderfall from the nearly 2,000 foot-tall luaʻi pele, the roaringly high fountain at Kīlauea Iki in Fall 1959. Puʻupuaʻi, the hill constructed by Her then, is off to my right, but I forgot to take a pic, enthralled as I was... The big dense cobbles are lithic tephra exploded out of the Lua during the events in 1790.

Pōhāhā is the word for tephra: from the Pukui and Elbert (P/E) Dictionary: "volcanic ejecta of any kind". Cinder are light and somewhat airy, while lithic tephra are dense pōhaku (stones).

Try look good above, and you can perhaps discern that bit of pele at the base of the fume. Maunaloa rises in the distance. Below, taken yesterday too, is the same west vent, a spatter cone at the edge of the loko ahi. 66 feet tall as measured with a laser rangefinder by HVO staff. USGS photo by MZoeller, as posted on the HVO website:

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/hawaiian-volcano-observatory/multimedia

The photo amazes. Fresh silvery-sheened pāhoehoe, still red in crevices, and glowing pōhāhā, airborne to the right of the puʻu. Pāhoehoe is also the completely apropos word for "satin".

Pulling back a bit via the S1 cam, below, the pāhoehoe sheen appears as flat white patches on the crust.

And this morning, aided by the angle of the sun, the fresher, more reflective surface is outstanding!

Photographs always fail to capture...the...essence? The reality of standing there watching Pele at work is...sublime. Hard to describe. And a thing that interests me is that so many tourists, as we again observed yesterday: They walk up phonecamera in hand, take pics, watch for a few minutes and leave. Been there, done that. Check. Next???

Not much else to say.

Not sure if the image below will be readable, but geographies matter, and are helpful. The GoogleEarth image is dated 12/25/20, but it depicts the waterlake, obliterated on 12/20/20...

Near bottom left of image: From the Viewpoint to approx west vent is about 1.25 miles. Akanikōlea is labeled between those two pins.

Below, the view, just slightly skewed. Mahalo piha te for sharing. Taken from the Viewpoint, slopes of Maunaloa in the distance obscured by cloud and fume. On left horizon, is a darkish hump. Not the tiny bit of dark fault at the edge, but below and right of that is Akanikōlea. Thatʻs where Kamapuaʻa stood and taunted Pele. Good reading in "Pele and Hiʻiaka" by Emerson.

Keen-eyes might pick out the red of Pele at base of fumecloud. Swirls of sortashiny lava at left were erupted in 1974. Bright red behind 1790 boulder is a non-traditional hoʻokupu (offering) of anthurium.

-kupu

hoʻo.kupu Tribute, tax, ceremonial gift-giving to a chief as a sign of honor and respect; to pay such tribute; church offering. (Ezera 6.8.)

"Hoʻokupu" was the word I was looking for yesterday when describing the hula at Uēkahuna. The "chief" in that case is Pelehonuamea. Too many trains of thought, and jams occasionally occur.

And too, fleeting flashes of inspiration sometimes quickly evaporate, till...again, yesterday I was moved:

"Halemaʻumaʻu" hula by Moanaʻs Hula Halau on Molokai

So very lovely. And their own hoʻokupu, not a competition, but a sharing.

For the 10th anniversary of the 2008 - 2018 eruption of Halemaʻumaʻu, HVO made a video. The opening, chanted by Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele:

E komo maloko o Halemaʻumaʻu

To get the gist, busʻ out the dictionary. "He mau nā puʻu e ʻolāʻolā nei" refers to the ceaseless gurgling of puʻu within. Then and now. Timeless.

The F1 Thermal cam this morning. Still two primary vents. Bottom right bright is the new west vent as seen above. The edifice of what was the west vent of December 2020 to May 2021 is growing, being wrapped by rafts of cooling crust...at the bottom of the image.

If youʻre ʻeleu:

Active, alert, energetic, lively, nimble, quick, dexterous, agile, spry, sprightly, prompt.

And awake at dawn or dusk, and have a bit of OCD, a quick click will Save webcam images. As Iʻve said, pitchblackness doesnʻt provide context. I prefer a little light to be able to place things in proper perspective, something not possible when overwhelmed with contrast of BRIGHT pele and DARK sky.

And being a fan of black and white photography, from the Maunaloa Road cam, below, not quite enough light to colorize the scene. The sky reminds me of chatoyant swirls of the grain of kamani.

And in the Monitoring Realm, Tilt continues to decline. That sharp uptick marks a couple ʻōlaʻi, earthquakes just before Pele awakened on September 29.

And below, locations of ʻōlaʻi: A scene of relative calm. At the moment. As a reminder, Red=less than 2hrs old, Orange= 2hrs to 2 days, Yellow=2 days to 2 weeks, and White=two to 4 weeks old.