Sunday, September 27, 2009

Launching the blog


Another day in Hawaii is not always just another day in Hawaii... Things happen-- Little things-- sometimes crazy surprising things... Depends, I suppose on what we each see & feel as special or not...

... Well special for me today, in the context of a blog titled Hawaiian Lava Daily, is that the ongoing lava flowing explosively into the ocean down the road from me for the past year and a half has stopped!

Okay-- well there may still be a trickle or two and this is not the 1st time--

See-- there is a thing going on called by the geologists inflation/deflation. This refers to the amount of magma pressure under the Kilauea Volcano, the source of the lava, as registered by the zillion monitors and sensors across this dot of Pacific lava: the Big Island (The most monitored volcano in the world)...
... More on that in later posts... So, the past few days, after a nice week of pressurized lava in an inflationary stage in which huge plumes of steam & sulfur dioxide could be seen for twenty miles and visitors were wowed bigtime -- deflation has come on strong...

... That deflation caused the pressure of the erupting lava drop a lot, which in turn, causes the lava filling the massive seven-mile long tube system to run out of lava...

So If you are heading out to view lava pouring out of tubes into the sea tonight, you may be disappointed-- On the other hand-- Pele, the Volcano Goddess, can change it all up pretty fast and bring on a new inflation-driven show within hours... so go check it out anyway!

Meanwhile today, we have a perfectly warm Trade Wind with sun and some Trade clouds floating from the northeast to the southwest… after night & morning rains.

The surf has been pretty sweet the past few days with sets of shoulder & head high rolling across the southeast shore reef-breaks... A bit of a wind chop at the moment… might be more bettah by late afternoon...
..Oh, this photo of the lava entering the ocean is what usually is happening and today is not :)

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for doing this blog Leigh. Now I can check out the lava activity, weather and surf, all in the same place. This will come in handy for locals as well as visitors. We need this kind of realtime report for the Puna area.
    That twin plume shot is awesome.

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