Lava rocks!

/ 27/05/2018

Built on lava rock

What’s in a name. Would lava by any other name smell as sweet? Perhaps that is not the right question: lava is many things, but sweet-smelling it is not. It smells like a rose bush that was doused in some evil sulphurous pesticide and then put on fire. This rose also constantly explodes with a roar well above the legal maximum. No, Shakespeare’s rose is definitely the wrong analogy. The course of true lava never did run smooth.

But in geology, names are everything. The number of different minerals is staggering, and each has a different name which normally reflects its point of discovery rather than implying anything about the composition. Olivine has nothing to do with olives and perovskite is not a rock band. Do you know your cryolite from your kryptonite? How is your appetite for apatite? Studying geology must be like learning Inuit.

Volcanic rocks share this nomenclaturic nightmare. What on earth is rhyolite? What happened to komatiite? And what stuff is tuff? Even google can get confused: ask for amygdale, and it gives the right definition but images of something completely different. At least it knows not to show images of amygdala (which might require that you confirm your age). But for all of you who were confused but afraid to ask, here is help. This post gives all you need to know to understand the variety of rocks from lava, or at least help you speak like you do. Welcome to the club. We all bluffed our way into geological volcanology.

Lava is molten rock. At the end, it solidifies back into rock. So you should get back what you started with, right? Wrong. Just imagine a block of ice. Melt it, vaporize it, and let it condense and freeze, you may get snow. Both are solid water, but that is all they have in common. So too with rock, although with much more variety.

So let’s have a look at why not all lava is the same. For most of the images, if you click on them you will get full resolution. All the poor ones are from my own collection.

Basalt

Basalt. Photo by the author

The type specimen of volcanic rock is basalt. It is effectively mantle material, which was melted at the bottom of the crust, ejected from a convenient hole (also called a ‘volcano’), flowed downhill for a bit and solidified there. You are looking at displaced mantle material. Most of the ocean floor consists of this stuff. It is heavy because the mantle is made of denser material than the continental crust (if it weren’t, the crust would sink down like an overweight iceberg and continental existence would be short-lived). In practice, the density of basalt is close to 3000 kg per cubic meter. The continental crust is typically around 2700 kg per cubic meter.

Basalt is the ultimate volcanic rock. Why doesn’t every old lava flow look like this? There are a number of reasons why not all lavas are the same.

1. Temperature and viscosity

The first effect is that of temperature and viscosity. I know, that is two, but they are closely related. Lava can be compared to honey. Warm honey flows easily, but put it in the fridge for a few minutes and it becomes much less keen to spread out, even though it is still a liquid. Honey is actually quite a complex substance, even though it is mainly just sugar dissolved in water. The melting temperature is around 45 C (depending on the sugar concentration): above that temperature, it does indeed behave like sugar water. Below that temperature, it should freeze but it doesn’t, at least not until the temperature goes down to about 5 C. In between, it is a super-saturated liquid, where there is more sugar dissolved in the water than fits. The excess sugar forms crystals and this turns the honey into a mush. As it cools, more and more crystals form and the honey becomes stickier and stickier. Finally, it freezes. (Strictly speaking it doesn’t fully freeze until it reaches -50 C, but below 5 C it is so sticky you hardly notice the difference.) Now turn the temperature back up – and nothing happens until you reach the melting temperature. Funny honey. (When we call a loved one ‘honey’ one does wonder which characteristic of honey is intended. This expression is definitely open to interpretation.)

The stickiness is also called ‘viscosity’. Higher viscosity means stickier, i.e. more reluctant to move.

So in what way is lava like honey? Should I call my loved one ‘lava’ or would that get my fingers burned? Well, lava is also a mix of substances, and these have different melting temperatures. As lava cools, some substance may come out of the liquid and crystallize. As more and more crystals form, the lava becomes less runny and more sticky. And this gives rise to the two Hawaiian words used to describe lava flows: Pahoehoe and A’a.

Pahoehoe

A’a.

Pahoehoe is the thinner, runnier lava that happily covers large distances and creates smooth lava flow which afterwards you can walk on. It is the hot honey.

A’a is the sticky lava that refuses to go anywhere fast. It forms very uneven surfaces and is a nightmare to walk on (even after it has cooled enough). Its surface will shred your shoes – this is the one place on earth where high heels may give an advantage. A’a is the honey that has been kept too cool and really would have needed a few seconds in the microwave.

In Puna, the early eruption brought up lava that had been in storage for decades – perhaps centuries. Even though it had stayed warm (a kilometre of rock insulates pretty well), it did not stay hot. This became the sticky stuff, with high viscosity; this explains why the initial eruptions did not produce much in terms of lava flows. It built walls – not roads. Later, the new lava arrived and this was much hotter. The hot, new, all-running and dancing low-viscosity lava ran like runny honey and in no time covered huge swathes of country side.

Even though both are basalt, the two behaved very differently. Poor Puna.

2. Composition

Let me divert for a minute. Lava contains a mix of elements. The main ones are iron, magnesium, silicon, and some other things such as aluminium (called aluminum in Trump land, a spelling that was in use in the UK very briefly but was introduced to the US through the Webster dictionary of 1812.) Each of these forms minerals (mainly oxides), and each mineral has a different melting point. Hot magma contains all these elements and their minerals, although not always in the same ratios. But keep magma for a while in a storage facility (also called a magma chamber) and it begins to cool – very slowly. The first minerals to hit their melting points are iron and magnesium oxides: they form crystals and drop out of the solution. Beforehand, the magma was called mafic (for magnesium (never to be called magnesum) and iron). Now that iron and magnesium are becoming depleted, it is called andesite – you may remember this word from Puna’s infamous fissure number 17.

Store the magma for even longer, and you are left with mainly silicates, mixed with a few other elements (aluminium, calcium, sodium). This is called felsic lava (the word ‘silicic’ is also used). Rhyolite and dacite are of this form. Dacite has made an appearance in the recent Puna stories, albeit only found in deep (geothermal) drilling and not on the surface.

You can expect that this will form a sequence in temperature: mafic lavas are hotter and thus less viscous, andesite is cooler and stickier, and felsic lavas are positively cold (as lavas go) and nearly immovable. And for the most part, you would be right. Mafic flows – felsic stalls.

Rhyolite

Andesite

There are a few exceptions: sometimes magmas form by melting rocks that themselves already lack certain elements. For instance, imagine a rhyolitic magma chamber solidifying into rock. Long after, heat finds its way to the rock and melts it: the new magma will have the composition of rhyolite, but it could well be much hotter than usual, and therefore far less viscous. You can now get a rhyolitic pahoehoe, and this is for instance found along the Snake River in Trump land.

(Hint: if you want to impress your friends, using the term rhyolitic pahoehoe in Puna will do wonders. But avoid saying the andesitic a’a of Haleakala which could leave the impression that you had a drink too many.)

Iron makes the world look black. That is true in lavas as well: mafic basalt is dark to black, while the andesite is greyer and the rhyolite is a bright lava. Of course, add oxygen and over time iron turns red, like the soils of Oklahoma.

I should point out here that the world of lava is simpler than it used to be. A few billion years ago, the mantle was hotter than it is now and therefore lava was considerably hotter as well. This gave a type of lava that is ultra-mafic, an extremely magnesium-rich, which is called komatiite. They don’t make it anymore.

3. Rate of cooling

So temperature is important. But how quickly the temperature goes down is also relevant. Lava rocks that solidify fast look very different from ones that cool only slowly. The rate of cooling has three different effects.

(i) Shape

The first of these makes sense: if the cooling is fast, the flow patterns become fixed in the material. The ultimate example is pillow lava: these are erupted under water, and in consequence cool very rapidly (in the battle between the mid-oceanic ridges and the ocean, the lava has yet to win. Luckily loosing builds character and pillow lavas do have that. Although one could argue that winning builds more character.)

Pillow lavas

Petrified lava ripples

On land, cooling is slower. Thin flows on the surface cool faster than thick ones. In the picture, the difference between the thin flow in the foreground and the thicker ones in the background is notable! The former solidified fast enough that the flow patterns froze in.

Pele’s hair

An extreme case is that of liquid droplets flying through the air. As they cool they solidify, and form long streamers. This creates the strangest rock of all, with the evocative name of Pele’s hair. You have to feel sorry for her hair dresser! What kind of comb would be needed? This lady is not for brushing! Pele’s hair can be found especially around lava fountains. But beware: the hair strands can be needle-sharp and should be handled only with thick gloves.

The strings come from wind acting on the flying droplets. If there is too little wind, you don’t get strings but tear-shaped droplets (very much like the shape of a drop of water falling from a leaky tap), about a centimetre across. These are called, not entirely surprisingly, Pele’s tears (although with the lady’s reputation, the need for tears seems minimal.)

(ii) Glass

So much for the first of the three effects. The second one is very different: this is when lava is cooled so quickly that it briefly forms a supercooled liquid, i.e. a liquid below its melting temperature. You can create this yourself by putting distilled water in the freezer. It will remain a liquid even though its temperature drops far below freezing. But disturb it ever so slightly, and it freezes over instantly. If you do this with molten rock, and let it suddenly solidify well below its melting temperature, it can create a glass. (The temperature below which this can happen is called the glass transition temperature, which is different for each material.) The trick is to make it solidify all at once, with as few separate crystals as possible.

An easier way to do this is by starting out with a lava which contains a bit of water. Water lowers the melting temperature, and so the lava can be cooler whilst still a liquid. Now evaporate the water (as can happen as the lava becomes exposed to air). Suddenly the melting temperature goes up, and the lava finds itself caught out, being a liquid well below its new melting temperature.

Obsidian

A well-known example of a rock that formed in this way is obsidian, a black rock of volcanic glass. It forms from silicate-rich melts, i.e. from rhyolites. Obsidian was sought-after in the stone age as it can be used for cutting (including the careless owner).

It should be harder to make a glass out of basalt, because it is hotter to begin with and readily forms crystals while cooling. But Hawaiian volcanoes manage it quite easily. Basaltic glass is called tachylite. It can be a thin edge on a crystallized lava flow, but on Hawaii it can form thick layers. And now you will not be surprised to know that Pele’s hair also consists of strands of this glass. Ouch again.

Perhaps the most dangerous of all is when lava meets the ocean. The instant cooling forms small particles of glass, and the rising steam carries them away. The white plumes of Puna, where the lava comes over the sea cliffs, are pretty only from a safe distance. There are several reasons why you shouldn’t breath in the stuff – the tiny glass particles among them.

(iii) Crystals

The third effect is that of crystallization. As lava cools, crystals begin to form. The slower the cooling, the larger the crystals can become. These crystals (or their absence) are easily recognized by eye.

Compare the following wo rocks. Both are obsidian, and thus formed through rapid (instantaneous) cooling. The left one looks ‘normal’: a hard glass, albeit with a greenish tint. The one on the right contains a host of crystals, a feldspar to be precise. What happened? It spend some time cooling slowly, allowing the crystals to form, before it suddenly cooled very fast and let the remainder turn to glass. The texture shows that it cooled in two distinct phases, one slow, one fast.

Two types of obsidian, with and without crystals

Pitchstone

The next one is pitchstone: also a rhyolitic glass, like obsidian, but containing a larger fraction of minute crystals. It gives the rock a dull appearance. The crystals are very small, and this shows that the initial cooling was fairly fast. Pitchstone contains a bit more water than normal obsidian, and so the rock has a lower melting temperature. The various minerals with the highest melting temperature had time to form small crystals before the remainder turned to glass.

Pegmatite

And finally the other extreme: this is a rock with enormous crystals which must have cooled very slowly. In fact this particular rock, a pegmatite, would have formed in the deep crust, where the cooling was so slow that the single crystal could take centuries to form, before the surrounding magma finally turned to stone.

Fragmentation

Now we know what volcanic rocks look like. But often, volcanic rocks look very different, striated or welded. They also come in a range of sizes, from the island-sized flows of Mauna Loa to the ash of Mount St Helens. What causes that difference?

Fragmentation of the lava comes mainly from explosions. Rock does not easily explode, of course: it lacks suitable chemistry, and lava is nowhere near hot enough to vaporize rock. The explosions come from trapped volatiles. Big explosions come from volatiles in magma which suddenly decide to become a gas, need a thousand time more volume for this, and end up blowing apart complete mountains. But it can also come from trapped vegetation underneath a lava flow, or even in one infamous incident, trapped snow. These kind of explosions produce flying lava bombs – the name is not entirely accurate, as the bombs are ejected by the explosion – they do not explode themselves.

The explosions produce fragments of a variety of sizes. They are distinguished by size.

Particles smaller than 2 mm are called ash.
Up to 6.5 cm it is lapilli.
Above that size it is a lava bomb.
All together it is called tephra.

Lava bombs of two different sizes

What goes up must come down – as true in volcanics as it is in politics. It is important to know that a lava bomb is made of lava – it will happily start a fire if it lands on flammable material; the danger is not just in being hit by a projectile with the size and speed of a cannon ball (although that is not entirely without danger either). They can be as large as 5 meters (although 20 centimeter is a more typical size, luckily), be ejected at a speed of 200 meters per second, and can travel considerable distances through the air: up to 5 kilometers. Lava bombs may also arrive as tachylite. Ouch!

Lapilli tuff

Smaller fragments travel further than large ones because they benefit from the lift from rising hot air of the eruption. These fragments also are much more voluminous, and the ash can cover large areas in a blanket that is centimeters to meters thick. It welds together, either through heat or over time. The welded layer is called tuff.

The name is not fully appropriate because it is the softest rock created by volcanic eruptions. The tuff can embed lapilli fragments and even lava bombs if not too far from the eruption site. Whereas the lava bombs have the composition of the lava, the tuff will often have a composition close to that of the mountain. If lava, it is often rhyolitic (because that explodes well). Tuff is often light coloured, and can be almost white. The best place to find tuff is in local buildings: it is everyone’s favourite building material. Although, be aware, if your local buildings use it, somewhere in the area is a mountain which made it, and which may have its own building demolition program.

A tuff sandwich. Source: sandatlas.org

The tuff in this image is layered between lapilli (which falls first) and ignimbrite, which is debris from a pyroclastic flow. The tuff can be recognized by its smoother texture.

Gas content

The final piece of the puzzle is the gas content of the erupted lava. If the gas content is high, the lava becomes frothy, and when it solidifies it has lots of holes, like a swiss cheese. There can be so many holes that the rock weighs less than water, and floats: this is called pumice, and it forms especially well after an underwater eruption where the water provides more gas than the lava can cope with. The sea can become covered by rafts of pumice kilometres wide: after Krakatoa, they made local sea travel almost impossible for months.

A floating island of pumice

Scoria. Source: wikpedia (Jonathan Zander)

If the stone has lots of holes but not enough to float it is called scoria or cinder (the two words are interchangeable; ‘cinder’ is older). This is where Cinderella got her name from. (No, I don’t know either. And nowadays she would be called Scorella.) These form especially during volcanic explosions as the gas-rich lava is shot out from the vent.

Amygdale

But gas bubbles can also form underground, and leave magma that solidified under ground with holes. Over time, the holes may become filled with water and the water can deposit new minerals, often a calcite. These rocks are called amygdales.

But it can get even better. The rocks can have very large holes inside, and over time, anything can happen in those holes. Open the rock and you may have the surprise of a life time, with wondrous crystals and colours. Here is an example, an oversized amethyst. What causes the different colours? That, my dear Watson, is elementary. But the science of volcanic gems is a different topic – a different post, perhaps.

An oversized amethyst

Albert, May 2018

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552 thoughts on “Lava rocks!”

  1. That is a big fountain… 70-150 meters high Im guessing.

    • USGS says: “Fissure 7 activity has increased overnight, producing a large spatter rampart over 100 feet tall from fountains reaching 150-200 feet. The fountains fed a perched pāhoehoe flow 20-40 feet thick, and ultimately a flow that had turned south toward the coast last night.”

  3. This has been the best read for this day! Thank you so much! I will invite my students to read it!

  4. What a brilliantly educational and entertaining piece, Albert – thank you. I learned so much – now for some alcohol which will ensure that I instantly forget the detail and then have to read it all over again.

    I think I’ve just discovered a new ‘circle of life’.

  5. Thankyou Albert for a very clear article on a topic I have always found confusing. I will be rereading it again and again I’m sure!

  6. Thank you for a great article on a topic I’ve puzzled over. I will be rereading this one.

    Kept in the dungeon by our deamon, who has an overly suspicious nature. Future comments should appear without delay – admin

    • Understandable—I’ve been lurking here since 2014 & finally got up the courage to say something.

  7. There are wells to the right and in a line towards the camera lower left area by that green roof building at the geothermal plant. May see the what happens pretty quickly. Maybe nothing?

  8. Not fair. I wanted to print up this article so I could read it offline and the pictures don’t print 🙁
    (The banner prints, so it isn’t that I’ve got a setting saying “don’t print pictures” .)

    • I tried making a pdf of it and lost many of the pics as well. (Not all, just many)

      • No idea why – unless it is the image resizes? The images embedded in the post are shown with reduced resolution

    • I ended up copy-pasting to a Word document; this meant additional steps to copy-paste each picture. Yeah, you would think the article isn’t that long to be worth the effort, but I can copy-paste while brain dead but can’t absorb new material in that state.
      Now I’ve read it, learned quite a bit, and have more questions. So typical, that. Having more questions every time I learn something 🙂

  9. Aa lava flow advancing towards Puna Geothermal Venture … it slowed but its still moving

  10. There are so many cracks west of Lelani, see:

    If I remember right from one of your articles this area was hit hard during the 1955 eruptions. Is there a chance that the volcanic action travels west as soon as it gets stuck in the east?

  11. Such a lovely child.
    Turns out the lavalake was just pregnant.

    Seriously though. I always thought the caldara floor to be more stable than this. Is there a shallow magma-chamber or something there it is collapsing in to?

    • Well none of the rock in the caldera is more than 250 years old and it filled very quickly so a lot of the rock is probably pumice-like and full of voids. On geological timescales these will get squeezed out but I dont think 250 years is long enough. For the overlook crater itself, none of the lava it is collapsing through is more than 100 years old so the same thing.

      If the overlook crater consumes the pre-existing crater, will it keep the name of halemaumau or will it get called the overlook crater still, or be called something else?

  12. Hi! I really liked the post! I am already a Geologist but I still found it very entertaining and I wish I would have being taught the subject like this in college! I have only one comment I would like to make, about Pegmatites. The name comes from the texture pegmatitic, which is characterized by the size of the crystals and it can happen in a wide range of compositions, from mafic to felsic rocks. Although time to cool plays a role in their formation, from my understanding, the most important factor it’s the amount of volatiles in the system and low viscosity fluids that allow great ion mobilities. And it is not necessary a great depth to form. Usually, Pegmatites are the result of the final stages of crystallization in magmas. (I’m sorry if I made some mistakes, English it’s not my native language).

    This was kept in the dungeon overnight by the deamon. All first-time commenters need approval, sadly for valid reasons. Welcome, hereby released and future comments should appear instantly on submission. – Admin

    • Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us, Gabriel. I agree. I liked the article too, Albert. It’s amazing to see an amethyst so large. It’s beautiful. One of my granddaughters will love this article.

    • I think I can see their problem. That horse only had 3 legs.

    • I’m pretty sure that leg was lost in the discovery of the horse mold in the tephra. That whole casting in plaster process is done by humans, not the volcano.

    • Hope no-one is in the other buildings; they may be cut off. Easier to see in the original USGS HVO image linked to above.

  15. You would think that someone whose job is centered around predicting where hazardous weather threatens and then advises the public about it would be familiar with the region they are talking about.

    Nope. Weather channel “analyst” circled the “Florida Panhandle” on his map and completely missed the panhandle. He got the Tallahassee to Jacksonville area well, but missed the panhandle completely, even though we are the ones he was supposed to be scaring.

    As for how people are responding? Not overly concerned. Them that know better couldn’t be bothered. Those that are new to it are freaking out just a little bit. Personally, I forgot to pick up butter and my wife is greifing me about it. I need to go back out and pick up tobacco, so it’s no big deal, I’ll get some while I’m out.

    • The Weather Channel has nothing to do with the weather, and hasn’t for years. I miss Marny Stanier.

    • Dunno if it was them or some local broadcast somewhere, but my favorite was the reporter speaking from inside a canoe about all the massive flooding when some guy putzes by in the few inches of water on the ground.

    • don’t forget coffee…..
      and anything stronger that You are allowed… 😉
      and matches….
      Best!motsfo

      • Got coffee. Had to get filters though. And my requisite 10 lbs of potatoes, though I don’t really think I’ll need them this time. :D.

    • For whatever reason, rhyodacite isn’t on the diagram, the intermediate of dacite and rhyolite. But one thing I’ve wondered is why there isn’t an intermediate between andesite and dacite, anyone know the reason?

      • Andacite?

        Where does komatiite fall on that graph, or is that basically the same as foidite but with more magnesium and iron?

    • Thanks for the memories. Haven’t seen that graph in ages (yes, I was a geologist once). 🙂

      • Once a geologist, always a geologist. Unless you have to have a lobotomy to leave the field.

  17. Such an informative and well written piece. I very much enjoyed reading it!!

  18. Halemaʻumaʻu Overlook has now a new pit adjoining to the lava lake conduit.. Pele has been busy rearranging the landscape.

  20. Thank you, Albert. A cogent and easy to read article. I learnt a lot from it, and appreciate the time and effort you put into bringing it to us!

      • Part of it, with wells and piping most likely getting consumed just to the right of the building in the web cam

    • This was a Civil Defense press conference the comments on the right are saying the islanders have been lied to the wells have not been capped just filled ?

      • They say no Hydrogen Sulfide going towards the PGV and none has been detected in the last two weeks.

        Helicopters are on standby in case of the need for evacuation.

        • Tom Travis head of task force said there are 4 wells on Pad E
          KS5 KS6 KS14 KS3 he said he thinks lava is approaching and may have reached KS6.

          He says that a pit with cinder covers the valves and this is in the hole the wells comes up into relating to KS5 KS6 KS14.

      • Unfortunately, the comment section of those live press releases are full with people that don’t listen and make their own conclusions. I listened to every one of PGV’s/Tom Travis’ interviews multiple times and they have never contradicted themselves. Today, they clearly said that the wells on the threatened pad were shut down, quenched, plugged, and filled with cinder.

    • A few of us on discord have been watching this cam for a week now, tracked down it’s coordinates and some of the other ones. One person made this map. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=19.471889761930573%2C-154.8807940925454&z=16&mid=1CvBhH9wEeztBrqYbsGDi4YjU1k1QH5AL

      This camera is at 19.480161 -154.888562

      The steam is probably coming from a holding pond that sits next to the wells. In the old Jim Hutton/John Wayne Helfighters, such devices are used for blowout prevention. BTW: I just watch that old flick as they have to deal with a poison gas well near a volcano.

      • So the building with the green roof was part of GPV?

        If this flow cuts highway 132, it leaves Kapoho without a good road out.

      • I love that movie! Storyline is hokey but the SFX were top-drawer. I’ve had an interest in well-control incidents because of that movie. It’s happened before, at Krafla. There have been blowouts at PGV before, too. Dig this: (http://www.environment-hawaii.org/?p=3857)

        I was on vacay in 2007 and going for breakfast at Ken’s Pancakes in Hilo, saw a couple guys with Halliburton overalls on, usually only see that in the oil patch. We discussed PGV, the latest blowout that had happened–they said they did what they would have done with an oil well–pump mud (bentonite) downhole until it shut up.

        When/if a well blows out you’ll know it, there’ll be no mistaking it. There’ll be a tight jet of steam somewhere 500-1000 feet high, and a sound that’ll drown out the lava fountains.

  29. sorry, i don’t know what 19.480161 -154.888562 means can i have a more vague discription of the camera’s location?

    • Looks like pretty much the entire fissure is still active, all the way up to the original fissures that fed the first flow to reach the ocean and including fissure 17. HVO has reported activity slowing down but if anything it has stayed constant and just shifted locations a lot.

  32. is this the original position and has that huge fountain become this small sloopy boiling pot??

  33. Thank you.

    The lava stream is moving really fast on the top right hand corner ?

  34. Judging from the map, the lava flow that is flowing to the right in the PGCam image has found the descent path to the north. If this continues, it would cross 132 and continue directly north. The flow rate does not seem high enough to get very far, though.

  36. On the CNN live feed is that the same lava river movement in the top right hand corner that seems to be bobbing up and down?

  37. John on the civil beat live feed has just commented that the dam is breaking from the fast flowing river.

    • is this huge bright spot due to night vision camera or is the world on fire??

      • The bright spot is a new flow going to the north. From the looks of the glow I would say it is a pretty big flow. It probably isnt surprising that the channel to the south east as well as both ocean entries are very reduced now. This flow is probably going to be on that sort of scale too, except much wider because the terrain is way flatter on that side.

        The reason it looks so bright is because it is illuminating the cloud above it.

  39. The world is on fire just watching the live feeds the break out of lava is mindblowing .

      • On the CNN live feed the speed of the lava can be seen but it’s also erupting so high with force.

  41. There is a lot going on tonight. Have the police scanner at the same time, really weird. The flow is much faster moving. There seem to be people trapped.
    And I was lamenting Piney and the PGV shed with the green roof. Never get fond of anything in an active volcanic region.

    • They got the guy on luana st. No medical attention needed. His house went up as they were retrieving him.

      Another trapped call just came in.

  42. Ken Boyer is moving away from the area and will reposition. Apparently vent 24 has taken off big time. Going to be a sad night….

    • Here you go Janet, one hungry whale coming up 😀
      [IMG][/IMG]

      • Thank you so much I thought everyone would think I was crazy . 🙂

  46. Fissure 24 is on Kuponeo street, close the southern edge of Leilani. If that is a lava flow pushing north, much of Leilani will be endangered.

  47. I think some of this big new flow was probably from the fissure 7 lava pond (more like a lake really) breaking out as the lava channel going to the south has completely died now that this new flow has started. But definitely fissure 24 or 25 has started off big time, it looks like this flow is taking basically all the lava erupting now. With 3 fissures all going high now I wonder if the pressure was getting higher, there have been a lot of earthquakes in that area in the last few hours so that is probably not a great sign for those who want the eruption to end… If the earthquakes indicate even more magma then things could get really huge overnight, if a high fountain starts then basically being anywhere downhill of that area is a bad idea, including on the south side. A small compensation would be that it would create a really big cinder cone, a monument to the loss of the neighborhood.

  48. Quickie question – if already answered elsewhere in voluminous comments I apologise! – does anyone know where I can find a ‘3DBulge’ type visualisation of the Kilauea seismicity?

    Thanks.

  49. The only lava on the webcam now is in that northern flow, and it is flowing really fast too… You can see the glow to the left of the vent where the ponded lava was before. Probably why it was so fast, and now it is being fed by all the fissures… That flow has more than doubled in size since about 2 hours ago.

    • And fissure 6 reactivated… Its only spattering but it is going pretty high .

      • Actually nevermind the lava is flowing fast down that channel again, but nowhere near the sort of volume from the new flow, at least at the moment.

    • Thats fissure 6 which became inactive a few days ago and reactivated about an hour ago quite suddenly.

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