Volcano World Cup 2018: Semi Finals

So now we are in the semi finals stage and one step away from the final, when we have some serious volcano nations going up against each other. Who do you want to see in the final? Just cast your votes.

 

Peru vs Costa Rica

PERU

Sabancaya blowing out an ash plume. SOURCE: www.photovolcanica.com

For Peru I will pick Sabancaya to represent them and to go up against Costa Rica. Sabancaya is currently in a state of continuous eruption constantly blowing ash plumes since 2016, though historical eruptions date back to 1750. It is located just to the northeast of the inactive Ampato Volcano and southwest of the town Chivay.

COSTA RICA

Turrialba in eruption. SOURCE: www.delapuravida.com

Volcan Turrialba will represent Costa Rica to go up against Peru’s Volcan Sabancaya. The eruptions of Turrialba were first recorded in the mid 1800s before it went into a long period of repose. It was in 2010 when it reactivated eventually taking over Arenal for the title of being Costa Rica’s most active volcano when Arenal ceased activity during late 2010.

 

Iceland vs Japan

ICELAND

The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010. SOURCE: www.photovolcanica.com

For Iceland I will pick the famous Eyjafjallajokull for this crunch semi final against Japan. Prior to the eruption of 2010, Eyjafjallajokull only had two historical eruptions and that was in 1612 and in 1821-23 but despite this, it used to be a lesser known volcano. In 2010, the initial eruption came from a fissure at Fimmvorduhals on the saddle between Eyjafjallajokull and Katla before the activity migrated to the central crater. Because the central crater was buried in a glacier, the magma caused the ice to melt which resulted in a thick ash plume as a result of lava-meltwater interaction. For a couple of months the northerly winds blew the ash into Europe resulting in disrupted air travel.

JAPAN

The explosive Sakura-jima. SOURCE: www.photovolcanica.com

The mighty Sakura-jima will go up for Japan against Iceland. Sakura-jima is a stratovolcano which is part of the Aira caldera system and located outside of the city of Kagoshima, and it’s one of Japan’s most active volcanoes. Constant explosive eruptions occur on a regular basis but historical eruptions date way back to the year 708 AD.

 

Polls will close on 13th July.

RENÉ GOAD

77 thoughts on “Volcano World Cup 2018: Semi Finals

  1. well I wasn’t expecting japan/iceland to have been drawn against each other – still a small chance that peru or costa rica could win- if japan/iceland are tired after a long and hard fought semi final – maybe one of them will pull out a fresh eruption in time for the final? 🙂 I’ve been voting for the country whose volcano I want to hear more about at each round. I’m hoping we get nice big posts about all the contenders over the coming year.

  2. Surely the winner is now obvious! Unless Iceland collapses… ahem, 7-1 hehe

  3. I was told today by a local that he could read the newspaper by the light of the lava fountain at a distance of 6 miles. This adds some information to an earlier discussion here.

    PGCam shows a very ragged looking lava river but as far as I can make out, it has not overflows it bed around Leilani. The new thermal image does suggest that the flow is looking for new options – with new houses at risk.

    • I’ve tried that “reading a newspaper by the light” thing with a thunderstorm that damaged the house I was in with a tornado. All I could make out were the large headlines… then I noticed a section of the storm with relatively little lightning. At that point I nearly shat myself and quickly secured the breakers to the house and took cover.

      (My head was filled with visions of old knob and tube wiring in the attic due to the age of the house)

  4. Of all the teams to go against each other it had to be a choice between Iceland or Japan, those were the two I always voted for before now…
    Anyway I commented this on the last article but I think it would be better to put here on a new page.

    “Because I think I have made my point about why kilauea is the best volcano 😉 I have decided to actually make a post about something else for a change… 🙂

    Because I live in Australia where there are no currently imminent eruptions on the way, I decided to look at some of the older volcanoes. One of the more obvious and biggest ones is mt warning, which is the central plug of the massive tweed volcano, one of the biggest still standing volcanoes in the southern hemisphere even though it is 23 million years old.
    On the wikipedia page it mentioned that the initial stages were extensive flows of basaltic lava that covered a huge area about 100 km across, and that paleosoil and sedimentary rock are sometimes found between the flows which indicates significant time between eruptions during this period. Afterwards is started erupting more silicic rocks from its central vent area, which are very hard and have resisted erosion in a lot of places. Basalt erupted again on top of this rhyolite and slowly declined before the volcano went extinct.

    It is this first stage of activity that I noticed, because there is a very strong similarity between the eruptions then and the currently active mcbride volcanic field a lot further north. Mcbride is extremely flat so it isn’t really a shield volcano as such, but there is a general high point in the middle and the slope of the field seems to largely radiate from a central point. The central point is today near the location of undara crater, the origin of one of the most extensive well preserved lava flows on earth. Eruptions happen about every 10,000 years here, the last one was kinrara volcano and it was recently studied in detail and found to be 7000 years old, making mcbride the second holocene volcano on the Australian mainland, and the next eruption will very likely take place in the next 5000 years. Studies at the same time as that appear to indicate there have been no significant positive deviations from that 10,000 year gap in at least 2 million years, with the eruption frequency gradually increasing over that time, although as the undara field is relatively young and covers half of the entire thing there could be a lot more hidden vents.

    I have thought about it a bit over the last few days since I commented on it above, and I think the mcbride field could be in the initial stages of the formation of a large polygenetic central volcano, which would be the first to form in Australia since mt canabolas 13 million years ago. Mcbride isn’t near a known hotspot but whatever is feeding it is very robust and doesn’t seem to be dependent on deep mantle sources as eruptions have happened in the same area for over 40 million years but especially have picked up in the past 2 million years. It is possible that the area is being warped slightly due to continental collision further north where Papua is colliding with island arcs in the pacific. This would produce a similar affect as what Carl described in his Volcanoes of Norway post a few months ago, although not quite on that scale.

    I have not found any evidence that mcbride has a magma chamber within the crust, but there are very few studies done on it beyond the size of the lava flows there so it is actually very possible that it does have a magma chamber, possibly formed during the at least 150 year long undara eruption 190,000 years ago and kept alive by nearby smaller eruptions since then. Eventually the magma supply from depth will increase as a more established and open conduit forms and allows more extensive melting, and as the volume increases some more silicic rocks erupt and build a noticeable edifice, although basaltic vents will likely erupt around it still. All of that is hypothetical but some similar volcanoes, like payun matru in Argentina, have magma chambers and silicic volcanism alongside long basalt flows, and have even formed large calderas, so this could be what this area is destined to become in the future.

    It is pretty cool to think that this volcanic field could be on the verge of becoming a true central volcano (in geological time at least). The area is quite high up already so if it gets to a fairly standard height of 2.5 km tall above its base then it would be a 3.5 km tall mountain, maybe the first time one of those has existed in Australia for a very long time.

    Again, a lot of this is not actually known (yet) but it is fun to speculate.”

  5. I will always stay on Kilaueas side!
    Kilauea been my favorite volcano since 4 years old. Nothing is better than Kilauea and Mauna Loa

    • Hmm… a “rope” funnel. Those are usually late stage tornadoes. I imagine that this process keeps repeating itself over and over in that area.

    • i was going to say “Yeah! Good Catch!” and i open it to find it on the HVO page. so i say “Yeah! Good Catch!” Thanks for posting! Like a volcano isn’t enough one must watch for tornados too! So this earthly “Paradise” has a little earthly “hell” too. Best!motsfo

    • That’s a nice picture of cloud to ground tornado being away enough from fissure 8 to see it clearly. Thanks 🙂

  6. Fissure 8 continues to spew out fluid basalts at high rates. The vents mouth is now doing large ” dome fountains” and upwellings, the gassy fluid lava is still emerging at high eruptive rates.
    Near the vent its moving very fast.
    Fountains rarely if ever rise above the spatter cones rim anymore.

    • It actually looks very similar to holuhraun, no major lava fountains but very high eruption rate. Maybe this is a characteristic of all Hawaiian eruptions with a high effusion rate that sustains for longer than a week, and possibly why mauna loa doesn’t typically have high fountains. All the really big lava fountains seem to have been produced during episodic eruptions where the fountain itself is typically active for less than a day. The 5 days of continuous high fountaining in kilauea iki and the generally more than 100 meter tall fountains of 1960 seems to be the longest continuous high fountain from an eruption in Hawaii. This might have something to do with the more primitive magma of that eruption sequence though.

      I guess there is a possibility this eruption could still have some high fountain activity in its waning stages as the supply slows and the lava in the crater drowns the vent and it becomes geyser-like with repeated high bursts every few hours to days as the pressure rises and blows out the lava pond. There is some evidence the pu’u kaliu eruption might have ended this way and probably a lot of the cone building was done then. This activity would produce fast moving but short lived lava flows in basically any direction so areas near the vent and downhill from said areas should still be considered at risk despite the perceived stability.

      • In the past few days a new feature has developed at Kilauea: a mini collapse roughy 6 hours before the main quake.

      • No the fountains are definitely lower now, I looked at some earlier saved webcam pictures from before the cone formed and compared it to now, and I think HVO was wrong about the fountain height being only 60 meters or less when the fissure opened. The cone is 55 meters tall now and the lava fountain in the pictures is easily going twice the height of what the cone looks like now from the same place, so the fountain was probably going well over 100 meters high sometime in early June.

        While on the subject, the fissure 17 fountain was definitely at least 150 meters high when it was constructing ‘mt rusty’. The fountain was going far above the top of the livestream camera window and that was probably about 100 meters tall at the distance of the vent. This was in the early morning of May 18 and pu’u o’o lava started erupting vigorously from some of the other nearby fissures only a few hours later so that might have had something to do with it.

  7. A really large short high eruptive rate Mauna Loa eruption often starts as a long line of lava fountains with thousands of cubic meters an hour. Opening of 1950 and 1984.
    Leilani 2018 lacked the spectacular opening phase.

    Later most of the fountains dies down as the dyke finds the most efficent pathway to the surface forming the typical main fountain and cinder cone fountains are now the tallest.

    Its when most of the charged up gas is gone that we gets the typical dome fountains and upwellings and still very very high eruptive rates.
    Its likley it will continue like this for some time.

    • Maybe this eruption will be like a reverse of that, starting slow before going into the sustained high eruption rate before a short phase of extreme eruption with high fountaining and then an abrupt ending. The majority of kilaueas eruptions seem to start off small but get (usually a lot) bigger in the later stages. there are a few exceptions like the 1974 eruptions, 1840 and 1823, but those all differ from the current eruption in a more fundamental way so there is little comparison. I dont know why this is because most similar volcanoes go big at the start and decline, including mauna loa and hualalai, as well as the vatnajokull volcanoes and some much smaller eruptors like piton de la fournaise. Maybe kilauea is too hot for

      The situation was a lot different and much faster progression than the current eruption, but the 1959 eruption started off with small fountains that almost died down to nothing on the second day (2000 m3 per hour, equivalent to 20 seconds of fissure 8 now or less than 1 second of the highest fountains in that eruption) but after the 3rd day it got way bigger and after the lava buried the vent it ended up becoming a sort of lava geyser that caused a lot of pressure to build up and lead to almost subplinian lava fountains sending tephra several km high and liquid lava almost 600 meters, even if the amount of lava that actually erupted on a given day was much lower than in the first week.

      The current eruption isn’t in a pit crater of course but if the lava ever ends up ponding at the vent it would end up in a similar situation which could cause a similar result, particularly as the eruption rate wanes and doesnt have the general energy to erupt as a dome fountain. This stage of activity, should it occur, would be marked by a notable increase in lava fountain height, and probably a partial or total abandoning of the established river as well as flows in most directions downhill including parts of leilani estates currently unaffected by the eruption as well as areas downslope to the south like Opihikao that havent been touched by actual lava (only SO2).

  8. Lol meant Thousands of cubic meters a second for Mauna Loa opening phase! 1950 was crazy and it can do much larger

  9. Holuhrauns vent was a bit larger than fissure 8
    Around 450 meters long. It become an enlongated bathtub early in the eruption as the fissure lava fountains built walls around them pooling the lava inside forming the iconic baugur vent.
    Tall fountains in the beginning August to September and fercious eruptive rates.
    October to November was slower and dominanted by large dome fountains.
    The eruption slowed to a crawl in January – February 2015 and stopped

  10. Off at a slight tangent, I found this useful You Tube summary of recent summit activity:

    • At about 1:45 in the video, check out the drop! It’s pretty impressive to see everything just drop maybe 30 feet and see the dust clouds rise afterwards

  11. I wonder if the ocean entry is forming a ledge so that in time it may collapse ? The lava can’t be flowing very deep due to cooling from the ocean water.

    • Most if not all of the lava delta is formed over very shallow water that is only a few meters deep. I think it used to be above sea level until the 1924 intrusion caused a lot of ground deformation and some areas subsided below sea level. That is why it flowed sideways so much instead of just flowing as a lava channel directly into the sea like the first ocean entries in May did. Those ocean entries flowed directly into deep water like the pu’u o’o ocean entries did, so to build a delta they would have had to build a deep support which takes time, while the first Kapoho ocean entry was basically like the flow was on land but below technically below sea level.
      The outer edge is probably in deep water but the volume of lava might have been enough to form a largely stable area that is probably too big to collapse all at once. It also might be further east than cape kumukahi and therefore the new easternmost point on the big island.
      That ocean entry is going to die out over the next week or so though as the lava within the flow drains out. The new flow is going south before the west side of kapoho crater and in all likeliness is going to do the same thing as the May ocean entries – flow directly into deep water as an open lava river and not spread as much.
      It will also take out kua o ka la school and ahalanui warm pond in the process and has probably already done so at the speed it was moving (2-3 km in <12 hours, also less than a km from the ocean in most recent pictures).

      Also you would be surprised how far channelized lava rivers can go underwater. In 1919 one of the lava flows from mauna loa was causing the ocean to steam 10 km offshore, the ocean at that location is about 1800 meters deep (and some deep sea fish were discovered floating on the surface that were unknown before). The same thing happened in 1950. The leidenfrost effect protects the lava as it flows underwater so it cools much slower than it would be expected, and when it does harden it forms a lava tube just like on land.

      • I dont think lava has flowed underwater very far during this eruption though, steam has always been centered around the entry, upwelling of water has been reported far away from the delta but that is not enough to indicate the presence of lava given it didnt happen at a fixed location and that there are many other ways to explain it. Some steam explosions where observed a few tens of meters from the delta but those seem to be over now.

        • I think if the lava delta was able to solidify a bit more so that only the channel would actually reach the ocean then it would have flowed a lot further into the water and probably also built a littoral cone at the point of entry, but mayeb the effusion rate was too high and the channel couldnt form properly on flat ground like that so it ended up intruding into the sides and seeping everywhere.

          The new flow going towards ahalanui warm pond is confined by the older flow so it is unlikely to flow anywhere else and as such it might completely channelize to the ocean.

          In 1960 there were actually reports of small lava fountains near cape kumukahi lighthouse and also upwelling east of there in places that were inconsistent with lava flowing underwater from the ocean entry active at that time, so it is likely that the dike went offshore and some small eruptions happened underwater. The lighthouse vent was later buried though so it is impossible to prove now.
          This is definitely not what is happening now though.

    • The lava delta has been growing on top of a platform where the ocean depht wasnt more then 30 m but now most of the lava delta must have reached the edge where the ocean floor suddenly drops, piling up lava there could eventually cause small collapses of the delta.

  12. On Philip Ong’s last livestream he was talking about the deep quakes under Pahala and people in the comments have been saying they could feel them in south Kona and on the sides of mauna loa. They have only been marked with low magnitudes on the USGS plot but they are very deep and basically in the mantle where the rock is hot and ductile so they must be equivalent to a much bigger quake at shallower depths. In a post on the south Iceland volcanic zone it was said that if earthquakes ever happen there as a swarm then just sit back and wait for the fireworks to start because a major rifting event and flood basalt is on the way. The area 30-40 km under the big island is going to be much hotter and more ductile than even the dead zone so for there to be persistent and fairly strong quakes at this depth for months there must be something major in the works. There have been quite a lot of these deep quakes in that area very recently (16 in the past week alone).
    This is all of the quakes under kilauea at depths of more than 15 km from this week:

    Clearly whatever is happening at the summit now isn’t very deep at all, so the initial statement HVO made about this possibly being like 1924 and kilauea going dormant for years is looking more and more unlikely every day, while their worst case scenario (significant increase in supply rate leading to major circumcaldera ring fault eruptions with high fountaining and subplinian activity, aka 1790 #2) is getting more and more likely… It is currently still a lot less likely than a steady continuous eruption just resuming in halemaumau but as the conduit there is sufficiently blocked to stop SO2 emissions the longer this goes on the more likely it is that the eruptions will be vigorous to violent when things return. The magma supply now is very high but there has been a safety valve called pu’u o’o that has been allowing the magma to just seep out of the volcano for the past 3 decades, a complete hole in the earths crust right into the mantle. The current activity sort of like that valve breaking, it is really destroying that finely tuned system and the more the caldera collapses the more likely it is that the east rift will be shut off and all new magma will have to escape elsewhere. The last time the magma supply was this high and all of it had to go through the summit was during the 1790 VEI 4, so HVO are wise to have considered this as a possibility.
    The location of the eruption is also important. Obviously the bottom of halemaumau seems like a very likely eruption location, but the now background levels of SO2 indicates the conduit feeding the lava lake has been thoroughly blocked so a new eruption there would probably be small and localized, and preceded by ample warning. The more dangerous situation involves the outer caldera fault. This is unlike the other faults inside it as the caldera inside this fault has not moved towards halemaumau, indicating this is not a slump scarp but a much deeper ring fault that connects to the magma chamber. Having an active and mobile fault directly linking a magma chamber to the surface is not a common feature and is one that is likely to play a big part in eruptions in the future. The southern part of this ring fault parallels the old caldera wall near the CRIM station, appears to be undergoing very slight extension based on the gifs from HVO, and lies above known magma bodies. This is also close to the origin of both the east rift and seismic southwest rift zones.
    There is only one other volcano I can think of which combines a contiouously open fissure with a high supply rate, one that is also quite notorious for its huge lava eruptions with essentially no warning…

    • I made this prediction of where the next eruption will be, drawn over the last frame of the July 8 caldera subsidence gif. It also shows what I was describing above.

      The orange is the deep part roughly corresponding to the old halemaumau, this is the most likely place for an eruption to happen if everything stops as it is now. Eruptions here would probably be similar to eruptions in 1952, 1961 and 1967-1968.
      The red areas are parts of the ring fault that appear to be undergoing slight extension on the gif. Eruptions here could happen very suddenly and be more similar to the 1959 eruption or possibly something much bigger. This is more likely as time goes on and the old conduit to the overlook crater cools down.

      All three areas would flow into halemaumau initially but it doesnt prevent other vents forming further out,

  13. The Kapoho 2018 ocean entry is quite huge. This is the largest ocean entry in my 23 years of life. The lava is entering the ocean on a wide front supplyed by the channels. Numerous ocean entry points and fingers and streamers of lava pours into the ocean.

  14. Did anyone watch Steve Brantley on the big island video News channel?
    That thing that one hour after all the caldera collapses fissure 8 increases the effusion for a while. And that the instruments in the lerz clearly detects the shock wave in the lava after the roof of the magma chamber hits the surface of the magma! Cool!

  15. Could be that fissure 8 is calming down. Or just relaxing for a moment…

    • It has been noted that the eruption appears to be fluctuating a lot starting from about a week ago (when the first blockage near four corners started)
      This is not necessarily a good thing because if the magma continues to be fed even at a low rate then it might build up pressure under the stagnant lava in the vent and become a lava geyser. The lava in that scenario would be able to flow in almost any direction from something like that, including south over the ridge or even west a bit over other areas currently unaffected.
      This would still be a sign of the eruption waning though, and a lava geyser event would probably be the final true act of this eruption. Strombolian activity from gas erupting through the remaining lava in the crater might continue for a while though but this would be like fissure 22 now and there would be no more big flows unless the vent stays open long enough for the volcano to recharge and feed a new flow to the vents.

      All this being said, the webcam shows the lava lake downstream still looks pretty much full to overflowing so I dont think it has ended yet…

      • Blockages can come from reducing flow (slower flows crust over more easily) but it may also be part of the river levees collapsing. They build up over time and can be unstable. The webcam seems to show a slightly lower lava river today, with some smoke close to the fissure which I presume is the overflow. HVO reports a major overflow/change around four corners with a new blockage and a flow approaching Ahalanui Beach Park. This is a dangerous phase where lava can suddenly flow in a new and perhaps unexpected direction. You can also get widening of the flow underneath the solid crust, endangering houses close to the flow bed which escaped so far. That seems to have happened to the last few Kapoho houses. Most of the remainder of Leilani is uphill from the fissure which is good, but areas close the river are at some risk.

        • That big flow going towards ahalanui started early yesterday and was already near the ocean by the end of the day, I dont know why HVO are only aware of its existence now if they are in the area all the time.

          Video from Bruce Omori and Mick Kalber yesterday showing the flow when it started.

          • Check this out – a STEAM DEVIL at 2:21, 2:32 and 2:45! The middle part is at its biggest, complete with swirling at the base.

  16. overflows in Leilani this morning… doesn’t look likeit’s slowing down… and here’s an old lady question: Up at the caldera there is a line of white(er) rocks on the far side… been watching them get exposed… any guesses what they are? And hasn’t the floor changed dramatically lately?? Best!motsfo

    • I think that is altered tephra that was next to the 1971 and 1974 vents.

  17. The big breakout upslope of kapoho crater has reached the ocean and buried ahalanui pond and kua o ka la. From descriptions of it this is probably the most vigorous ocean entry in the entire eruption, the entire flow of fissure 8 being concentrated in a single spot…

  18. USGS comment on CE events and fissure 8 flow rates

    USGS Volcanoes
    🌋
    ‏Verified account @USGSVolcanoes
    10h10 hours ago

    It has become more obvious of late. It’s taken some careful observation to make sure it’s actually a correlation, but it does seem that about an hour or two after the explosive events, there is an increase in effusion from fissure 8.

    ====

    Plus ERZ1 and 2 are removed to safety

    USGS Volcanoes
    🌋
    ‏Verified account @USGSVolcanoes
    11h11 hours ago

    That “surge” in activity was our technicians removing that seismometer. Both ERZ1 and ERZ2 are being taken out of the field today due to the threat of being overrun by the diverted lava channel. Good eye.

    • I have seen a few older comments from a few years ago on here saying the current period of aactivity is one of the lowest in recorded history in terms of large eruptions. The last eruption that was a solid VEI 6 was in 1991 ( possibly twice although I think cerro hudson was just short of the mark), and the last eruption approaching a VEI 5 was in 2011 (again though there were two similar sized eruptions).

      However after doing those calculations before I would actually go as far as to say the last 5 years has been exceptionally active, in 2012-2013 the large eruption of tolbachik happened, similar in size to the eruption in lower puna now. In 2014 to 2015 there was holuhraun, which is the biggest lava flow in the last 230 years anywhere on earth. In 2015 there was the eruption of wolf in the galapagos, which was probably at least 0.1 km3 and maybe significantly more (I cant find a volume for it). In 2018 there has so far been the major eruption at kilauea which is still ongoing and simultaneous with it is the possibly even bigger eruption at sierra negra. All of these eruptions would be equivalent to a large VEI 5 at least when the total thermal energy is compared with some actual explosive eruptions.

      Basically having sierra negra and kilauea erupting on a large scale simultaneously is equivalent to two VEI 6s at the same time, and holuhraun is a VEI 7, all in 3 years. That is the power of the VEI 0…

  19. Deep activity under Askja today.

    Wednesday 11.07.2018 22:30:17 65.124 -16.629 23.9 km 0.5 99.0 9.5 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 19:32:01 65.119 -16.612 21.0 km 0.5 99.0 8.9 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 19:25:39 65.103 -16.624 21.1 km 2.4 99.0 7.2 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 19:25:23 65.105 -16.608 22.0 km 1.4 99.0 7.4 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 19:09:01 65.117 -16.569 18.8 km 0.6 99.0 8.8 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 18:59:48 65.101 -16.621 21.5 km 0.9 99.0 7.0 km N of Dreki
    Wednesday 11.07.2018 16:50:58 65.110 -16.608 19.4 km 1.4 99.0 8.0 km N of Dreki
    Tuesday 10.07.2018 19:19:55 65.105 -16.616 21.4 km 0.8 99.0 7.4 km N of Dreki
    Tuesday 10.07.2018 17:42:45 65.098 -16.636 22.5 km 1.5 99.0 6.8 km NNW of Dreki
    Tuesday 10.07.2018 17:42:16 65.101 -16.633 19.0 km 0.7 99.0 7.1 km N of Dreki
    Tuesday 10.07.2018 17:41:39 65.102 -16.627 22.9 km 0.9 99.0 7.1 km N of Dreki

    Source IMO

    • Also noticed that. Could be start up of something. But most likely years from now..

      • Yes, I agree. 🙂
        The earthquake activity in Iceland is quite below average lately, compared to the past years. The more if one keeps in mind that the systems are much more sensible then lets say four years back…
        But things will become different again in time for sure!

    • Looking at the IMO site, I noticed these Askja quakes as well. It already started last year. I asked Jon about it some time ago, but he didn’t respond. Herdubreid is also ‘active’ since a couple of years, but those quakes (looks like an intrusion) seem to be stuck against a solid wall or plug of some sort. Katla keeps quiet this summer/year. Barda is also a lot less active, pretty normal. Orae is still building up for the time being. Hekla… is being Hekla. And then there still is Grimsvotn, which should/could (see previous article by Carl and Albert) erupt in 2019-2021 if I’m not mistaken. Silence before the storm.

  20. On topic with this actual competition, and after looking through the original list, I think as soon as Iceland was in the competition at all that it was going to win. It had a few potential competitors but after doing my calculations the other day I have been left with no other option. It might technically have produced smaller volume eruptions than Peru or Japan but with the sheer amount of lava erupted and the even larger amount of thermal energy I dont think any of the other teams in the competition at this point are even in the same league as Iceland.
    The large flood basalts are the volume equivalent of a VEI 6 but they are the thermal energy equivalent of a large VEI 7, are by far the biggest releases of thermal energy on earth in the holocene (skaftar fires is energetically equivalent to an eruption of 400 km3 of tephra, eldgja is at least 50% again), and despite this they happen less than 1000 years apart on average. It would take the energy contained in at least 8 times the entire active global nuclear arsenal to produce the amount of lava erupted by the skaftar fires, I dont think the other teams have a snowman’s chance in hell of winning… lol.

    • Sorry, had to do it 😀 And for those of you who grew up on this… remember, Cooper is in his 70s now. 🙁

  21. Looks like a tremor on southern tip at SPPD. Activity at Lohi?

  22. once upon a time when i was perusing the hwy cam/temps late at night i saw a 220 F reading…. normal temps at that time were 85F wonder if i caught a pulse thu.

  23. 2:42 in the live cam for our bumb today… looked like 2 jumps. Cam shook good.

    • bump…. BUMP!!! not bumb… and no auto correct to blame either.. 😉

    • This is called a glitch. The instrument lost track of where it was. It had been offline for awhile, and when coming back it had lost the correct calibration. It will settle back down and HVO will probably edit out the bad data.

      • Well, it now shows what happened. The next quake occured while the GPS was down. When is came back up, it measured the higher post-quake level, and the plotting software put a straight line between the last measured point before it went off, and the first one after. Plotting programs are quire happy making up data where there was none.

        This time, HV046 moved down from the quake. There must now be a fault behind it.

  24. https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/multimedia_uploads/multimediaFile-2418.mp4

    Finally it has been done, a complete timelapse of the entire formation of the new caldera, and probably the best observed caldera collapse in recorded history by a long shot.

    The collapsing area on the left side, as well as the fault going below the edge of the caldera in the foreground, are where I think there will be some significant eruptions in the near future. This webcam is going to have a very good view of any lava falls into halemaumau thats for sure…

  25. Lava falls… youtube.com/watch?v=H4_zkgZAJ1E CSAV 1959 eruption with lava falls within the crater.
    The view of the eruption from Volcano House with trees, the Volcano was covered in much more forest back then.
    I love the narration. Even though we were in the middle of the Cold War I feel the world was a much more peaceful, polite and friendly place then, children did as they were told and said please, etc’

    Hawaii is just as exiting as Iceland and its pleasantly warm. Just as dangerous though.

    • Here is the Puna 1955 youtube.com/watch?v=DN9pdJyGhuo
      Just found it not watched it yet…

    • liked the part where his camera and tripod went over….. taking pictures are so much safer today. Thanks! Best!motsfo

  26. Today’s earthquakes still show the same line of quiescence running across, separating two groups. There is now a bit of a third group, on the northwestern edge of the old caldera, where HVO itself is (or probably was).

    • I just looked, and this small swarm is on the old caldera wall just in front of and below HVO, not behind it. It could indicate this fault is becoming active and if that happens then the whole caldera floow could be involved in the collapse, with both larger quakes and stronger surges at pu’u 8 as a result. As we have seen this week, the lava channel is sensitive to volume changes so a really big surge could really do a lot of damage. This would likely also seal the fate of the east rift being active after this eruption, and also significantly increase the chance of the ‘worst case scenario’ summit eruption happening. So far the bottom of halemaumau is still just above the water table but if the whole caldera drops as a plug, even only 50 meters or so, the bottom will go well below the water table and a new lake will probably form within a few months, or less if it rains.
      After that there is nothing that can be done except to wait for the inevitable and hope it is ‘only’ like 1959 instead of 1790…

      Rip HVO building, and kilaueas friendly reputation…

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