On June 26, 2018, Deputy Scientist-in-Chief of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, Steve Brantley, gave a ten-minute slideshow at the Puna Community Meeting in Pahoa. Video of the meeting is posted here. Steve Brantley’s talk starts at 35:00 in that video.
BigIslandVideoNews excerpted half of his talk in this video, which they overlaid with footage from a June 24 USGS drone overflight of the summit:
Below is my transcript of the complete talk, including images that match or approximate his slides.
Steve Brantley (USGS):
Hello, everybody. Thank you for coming out.
I’ll just describe a few things occurring in the Lower East Rift Zone and then summarize the activity up at the summit at the very end.
Here’s an excellent 13-minute retrospective of Kilauea’s eruptions from the early 20th century right through June 25, 2018.
Now back to the present.
Today’s Eruption Summary
USGS: “At 10:41 p.m. HST on June 26, after approximately 25 hours of elevated seismicity, a collapse explosion occurred at the summit producing an ash-poor steam plume that rose less than 1,000 ft above the ground surface before drifting to the southwest. The event was captured by an HVO webcam in moonlight (plume in bottom of photo), located in the HVO observation tower.” (Full-sized)
It’s 11:30pm HST, and it looks like today’s “collapse explosion” is going to happen tomorrow. Are the explosion spacing themselves out more now? Too early to tell. There has been always some variation in their timing, despite the fact that it feels like we’re watching a magmatic equivalent of Old Faithful.
View of Fissure 8 cone and lava channel from USGS morning overflight. (Full-sized)
Meanwhile, Fissure 8 continues exactly what it has for— what, a month now? Fountains contained within its 180-foot spatter cone continue to pour out an 8-mile river of lava. Occasional spillovers near the head of the river usually don’t go past the margin of previous flows in this eruption. Fissure 22 is once again showing “incandescence” and pushing out small, short lava flows.
The ocean entry area fans out across a 1-km stretch of coast, but the bulk of the lava is dumping into the sea from Fissure 8’s main channel. Unfortunately, the northern margin of the lava flow has reactivated, too, pushing further into what’s left of Kapoho Beach Lots community.
USGS on Twitter: “Morning overflight revealed northern margin of flow field at the coast is oozing fresh #lava at several points in the area of #KapohoBeachLots. Small channel overflows feed short #pahoehoe flows.” (Full-sized)
Eruption Update for June 27 at 4PM. Due to active lava near houses in Kapoho, access by residents is not allowed. No additional houses have been destroyed at this time.
USGS: “Lava continues to enter the sea along the southern Kapoho coastline. Lava enters the ocean primarily through an open channel, but also along a 1-km (0.6 mi) wide area. Also visible in the image (center right) is an area at the northern margin of the flow field that is oozing fresh lava at several points in the area of Kapoho Beach Lots.” (Full-sized)
And that’s about it. Except that even with status quo, there’s some unusual sights and itoday. Such as this literal “Lava boat”:
