Saturday, October 16, 2010

~ Lava viewing area has lava to be viewed ~

Above: Under moonlit clouds, we see molten lava approaching the Hawaii County lava viewing area just after 10:00 PM closing time last night (ocean entry lava plume is the yellow glow furthest left).

Visitors who stayed at the viewing site until after dark were treated to a rapidly advancing surface flow of lava. Originating from the main lava tube west of this area, lava broke out from it early Friday afternoon and by early evening had progressed about 1600 feet east.

The access road and county viewing site are on the upper left, which places this lava very close to it at 11:00 PM last night.
Here we see local residents viewing the new roadside show last night. The flow traveled from the tube system right in overtop the same land covered just two weeks ago, as reported here.


By early this morning, when these photos below were taken, the breakout was slowing way down and had not progressed too much more than the night before, and may stall altogether later today. The ocean entry plume can be seen in this image.
The nearest homes to this molten lava were around 1100-feet away, but the stalling of this lava should provide some ease to the threat.

A Kalapana Gardens resident sent me the photo below taken a few hours after I left the area early this morning. We can see that lava moved out onto the road in that short time period ... maybe it is not done advancing afterall....

There are other sprawling fingers of this flow that moved southeast from the lava tube, and they too appeared to be stalling by 6:30 this morning.

Not any particular D/I events except for the missing monitor graph line for Kilauea this morning:

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