Wednesday, April 13, 2011

~ Kilauea eruption confined within craters ~

Above, the rise and fall of magma pressure as recorded by USGS radical tilt monitors the past seven days: Halema’uma’u is the green line and blue for Pu`u O`o.

Little has changed in the past week within the Kilauea Volcano eruptive zones, though there certainly is magma movement and lava flowing. This activity is confined to lava upwelling inside both the Halema’uma’u and Pu`u O`o craters.

Halema’uma’u pit crater vent continues showing lava deep inside, visibly rising and falling from magma changes far below. Here is a cam capture from this morning:

The crater floor of Pu`u O`o, which had collapsed violently on March 5th when the new fissures erupted, has been filling with new layers of lava fairly steadily; below is a cam-capture of this from this morning.

Seismic activity also remains pretty subdued when compared with the past few years of active surface flows. Here is today’s map showing the past two weeks of quakes (all very tiny temblors):

One good thing for us folks living near these active volcanoes is the levels of sulfur dioxide being emitted from the two craters is holding well below the volumes we had for most of the past three years, which was then about 700 to 1200 metric tonnes or more and is now only 300 to 500 tonnes from both craters combined .

All this information I write about above comes directly from the USGS/HVO volcano update pages and can be found by clicking on the links they provide HERE

Further updates:
I will only post further lava activity updates as significant changes occur. If you need a lava-rush -(don’t we all ;) - I would suggest taking some time to wander through past posts on my site. We have had some amazing lava action in the recent past and you can relive it or find posts and photos you may have not seen.

The archives are not as easy to navigate as I would like but here are the basics:
Scroll down the right side of this page and you will spot Blog Archive. Click on a year (2010 is pretty exciting :) and it will automatically display the first posts in that year, but to see the titles or to select individual months you will need scroll back down the right side where you will see the post titles and the other months of that years postings. By clicking on any month it will open the first seven posts of that month; one above the other for an easy look-through. And at the top of each month’s page you will be offered a link to see the rest of that months postings, looking like this:
Showing newest 10 of 16 posts from October 2010. Show older posts

Meanwhile I'll keep looking for lava to share with you-


~~~ Happy Trails,
Aloha,
Leigh

Saturday, April 2, 2011

~ Interesting deflation tilt blip and little quake today ~


Above, Halema’uma’u at 1:00 PM today.

As we all wait for more eruptive changes with Kilauea Volcano, we also pay closer attention to any changes taking place now.Not large at 3.5 magnitude, but seems significant, especially after this odd drop straight down on the Kilauea summit tilt graph, shown below and copied at 12:30 PM today.
It is also very significant that during this recent magma pressure inflation/deflation stage that Pu`u O`o did not waver and appeared unaffected by the huge pressure spike at the Kilauea summit region; this after having been mimicking the summit the week previously. The Hawaii Volcano Observatory guys are all on it and will likely give us their viewpoints on this.
Might be a sign of bigger changes… or not ;)

The quake was four miles south-southeast from the summit. Here is a list of recent Big Island earthquakes, and also this link to the Hawaii Island earthquake map

USGS/HVO images page showing the new lava lake inside the Pu`u O`o crater last week, March 28th.


USGS/HVO updates

Radical tilt graphs

All the volcano webcams here


USGS/HVO images page showing the new lava lake inside the Pu`u O`o crater last week, March 28th.