After 2 days of earthquakes and cracks indicating magma was moving down the Lower East Rift Zone, the first fissure opened in Leilani Estates at about 5PM HST, Thursday, May 3, 2018.
Big Island News posted a 10PM video update with video footage accompanying a May 3 civil defense advisory:
Leilani Estates is about 11 miles downrift from Pu’u O’o, in the Puna District.
Foggy/rainy weather had limited visibility, but the skies cleared May 3. A USGS overflight revealed the crater was completely drained:
At 10:30 AM, a magnitude-5 earthquake caused more of the crater to collapse, throwing up a cloud of pink ash.
Pu’u O’o crater sends up cloud of ash after M5.0 earthquake. HVO Photo/Video blog. Again, Full-sized image is dramatic.
See also Mick Kalber’s May 2 flyover video.
Meanwhile, increased seismicity at the summit coincided with the summit lava lake changing from inflation to deflation— this is when it began to drop (source: HVO Volcano Watch).
On May 1st, the night after Pu’u O’o’s floor fell in, the newly-drained crater was sending up a huge plume of pink ash.*
Source: Mick Kalber of Tropical Visions, flying with Paradise Helicopters, annotated by Big Island Video News. Here’s Mick’s observations about this flyover on his vimeo page).
Pu’u O’o: What it looked like just before it collapsed. See also this USGS timelapse movie of Pu’u O’o’s crater lava lake from March 20-April 18, and a blog post with a few good flyover photos on April 29.
(Pu’u O’o is a large vent on Kilauea’s shoulder that’s been erupting since 1983. See USGS / HVO photo history of the Pu’u O’o eruption.)
Halema’uma’u a few days before eruption started…
Excellent overview of lava lake, back wall and crater floor of Halema’uma’u. Shot from crater rim at Halema’uma’u overlook.
USGS: “This video shows an overview of the lake from the Halema‘uma‘u Crater rim, as well as some of the spattering that was occurring on the lake margin on Sunday, April 22.”
You can see how much it overflowed in just 3 days. Taken from crater rim, Halema’uma’u overlook.
USGS: “On Kīlauea Volcano’s summit, the Halema‘uma‘u lava lake’s high standing lake level produced intermittent overflows onto the crater floor. Smaller overflows and spattering have started to build a few discontinuous levees and a spatter cone around the lake margin, shown in these video clips taken from the lakes north and northeastern margin.“
USGS: “Vigorous overflows from Kīlauea’s summit lava lake covered a large portion of the floor of Halema‘uma‘u this morning. In this video, the view starts from the north and heads south, showing the north and east sides of Halema‘uma‘u crater. During the overflight, a large overflow was active on the north margin of the lava lake, sending a cascade of lava down the elevated lake rim.”
USGS: “This time-lapse video from 7:30 p.m. April 25 to 7:30 p.m. April 26 shows Halema‘uma‘u lava lake producing intermittent overflows onto the crater floor. The largest of these flows was from approximately 6:15 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on April 26 and covered about 90 acres (2/3) of the crater floor.”
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