This is my transcript of the July 2, 2018 11am USGS press briefing, which covered lava-created thunderstorms, whirlwinds, and rain; laze-induced lightning; and lava boats. Additionally, Mike Zoellner mentioned findings of a sonar expedition to measure the lava extending on the ocean floor.
Soundfile is archived here. BigIslandVideoNews has also posted most of it, overlaid with recent video footage:
Participants:
Leslie Gordon, USGS Public Affairs
Jessica Ferracane, Hawaii Volcanoes Nat’l Park Public Affairs
Robert Ballard, NWS
Mike Zoeller, HVO & Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes, UHI
Brian Shiro, seismologist, USGS/HVO
Transcript note: I omit salutations/pleasantries, jumping straight to news and information. Also I usually summarize questions to provide just enough context for USGS responses.
Fissure 8 gushes on unchallenged and unchanged, while Fissure 22 — remember the chief subject of Lavacam?— has started spattering 50-80m and sending out a modest lava flow headed NE along the edge of previous flows.
USGS photo from morning overflight, July 1, 2018. Fissure 8 in the distance, Fissure 22 in the middle ground across from PGV. (Full-sized)
Down at the coast, lava continues to ooze out from under much of the northern part of the delta along a broad front, with “pasty” lava squeezing out in several places along Kapoho Beach Lots.
As of 8:30pm 11pm HST, I’m waiting for confirmation of the next summit collapse/explosion.
Besides Fissure 22 reactivating in earnest, the news today is that new digital elevation maps and satellite images give us a clear view of the subsidence of Kilauea Caldera around Halema’uma’u, which has begun to show in livestream and webcam views lately.
First of all, USGS seismologist Kyle Anderson posted this color-coded slide of caldera ground deformation in his Thursday evening talk:
The colors compare the new June 19, 2018 drone-surveillance digital elevation map with a DEM of the caldera captured in 2009. Presumably the light gray areas within Halema’uma’u don’t correspond to anything on the older map, so can’t be compared. Green patches are earthquakes over the past few days indicating stress. And “300+ ft” marks the last known position of the NPIT GPS sensor before it sank out of radio contact. (Full-sized)
Next, the Italian Space Agency’s trusty Cosmo-Skymed satellite has sent us another radar survey of Kilauea. Even though I’d observed dramatic subsidence of the caldera floor in recent livestream and webcam images, the last frame of this animation made me gasp:
USGS: “This animated GIF shows a sequence of radar amplitude images that were acquired by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana CosmoSkyMed satellite system. The images illustrate changes to the caldera area of Kīlauea Volcano that occurred between May 5 and June 30 at about 6:00 a.m. HST[…] Over time, expansion of the summit eruptive vent within Halema‘uma‘u crater and the widening of Halema‘uma‘u itself are clear. Starting in late May, the development of several cracks outside Halema‘uma‘u is clear, and inward slumping of a large portion of the western, southwestern, and northern crater rim begins. Much of this motion appears to be coincident with the small explosions from the summit that have taken place on a near daily basis since early June. The most recent radar scene, from June 30, shows the formation of cracks over a broader area of the caldera floor, extending east of Halema‘uma‘u (these cracks are the scarps seen in recent photographs from the Keanakākoʻi overlook area). We expect this slumping to continue as long as the collapse events and overall subsidence persist. (Full-sized)We are well on our way to a nested caldera, with Halema’uma’u taking up over half the larger caldera floor. I’m hoping those earthquakes indicate where the edge of the new inner caldera will be, but I’m not a geologist. Here’s those scarps they mentioned, posted a few days ago:
USGS: “Comparison of photographs taken on June 13 and 26 from near Keanakāko’i Crater overlook in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park shows a subsidence scarp that formed as the Kīlauea Crater floor subsided. Scientists estimate the dramatic dropping of the crater floor in this area occurred sometime between June 23 and 26. The view is to the west. Halema‘uma‘u crater is in upper right.” (Full-sized)
Last but not least, the USGS posted this map of the fracturing around Halema’uma’u. Note that the diagram is projected onto a satellite photo of the pre-May caldera, so there’s a ghostly image of the Halema’uma’u we remember in that dark gray area.
USGS: “This map shows major fractures in yellow (as of June 29) on a base image acquired by the WorldView-2 satellite before the current sequence of events began at Kīlauea. The area of major subsidence has expanded east and south, and slightly west, of the main Halema‘uma‘u crater area. The large, red-shaded area east of Halema‘uma‘u is moving down within a scarp-bounded area, as seen in recent photographs of the summit. Some fractures have also formed to the east-northeast of the red-shaded area of accelerated motion, and also on the south caldera rim where parts of the caldera wall have slumped into the rapidly moving caldera floor below. The dark gray-shaded area within the red shaded area shows the region of most significant down dropping and is currently the deepest part of Kīlauea caldera.” (Full-sized)
So there you have it. Who would’ve thought the draining of the lava lake, which was minuscule compared to the whole summit caldera, would’ve had a domino effect this large?
This continues my transcription of the Thurs Jun 28 USGS presentation at Volcano Village. Part 1 transcribed HVO Scientist-in-Charge Tina Neal and seismologist Kyle Anderson’s remarks. Part 2 covers senior volcanologist and my longtime hero Don Swanson’s remarks.
Here’s the video of the entire 1.5 hour meeting. Don’s presentation starts at 15:50:
It sounds like Swanson’s been holed up in Volcano House after HVO was evacuated. (Kyle Anderson: “Don has spent more time viewing this eruption from the summit than anyone else.”)
Title of talk: “Comparisons of Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, May 19 through June 28 Viewed from dining room table of Volcano House”
The data that Kyle showed are absolutely magnificent. What I want to do now is to show you some photographs of features that I’ve been able to see during my observations. The first will be a series of photographs of Halemaʻumaʻu taken from the seat in the dining room of the Volcano House hotel where I sit and observe things.
Screencap of first slide in Don Swanson’s presentation. In USGS archives: [May 19] [June 13]On May 19th, of course, things were just starting to get going, but over here on June 13th, you can see that the crater has widened dramatically, and notice that it’s also dropped to the top of the tree which was way below the— it’s come way down. It isn’t because the tree is growing! It’s because the crater is dropping down.
Now we’ll go to this next period, June 13th to the 17th.
Fissure 8 continues to behave much as it has for the last month or so, looking ever more like a Mordor backdrop:
June 30, 2018: Fissure 8 looking Mordor-like during the USGS morning overflight. (Full-sized)
Today’s official HVO Kilauea update is a copy-and-paste of yesterday’s, apart from this small addition describing the lava delta: “lava is moving beneath the crust and into [the] still-molten interior of earlier flows before it enters the sea in multiple oozeouts.” Like this:
USGS: “Lava was entering the ocean over a broad area this morning. This image shows an active entry area along the northern flow front at Kapoho. View to the south.” (Full-sized)
Unfortunately, some of those “oozeouts” are occurring at the edge of Kapoho Beach Lots as well. At least one home burned today, perhaps more.
Check the Hawaii County Fire Department photos later in this post (or the Bruce Omori photos at the end of the post) to see what the slow-moving expansion into Kapoho Beach Lots looks like right now.
USGS: “View of Kīlauea Volcano’s summit [from Volcano House, I think]. The brown visible dust coming from Halema‘uma‘u is from rockfalls.” (Full-sized)
Kilauea’s summit is changing visibly day by day. Today’s collapse explosion came at 2:51pm, 31 hours after the previous event. Mag 5.3, as usual, with a 500-foot ash-poor plume (captured on livestream). It was somewhat obscured by dust from multiple rockfalls 3 minutes earlier. Here’s a before-and-after:
