Kilauea erupts again: Lava fountains soar in Hawaii for 31st time since December

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupted again, sending lava fountains up to 30 metres high, marking its 31st eruption since December. Summit crater activity poses no threat to homes, but draws visitors and livestream viewers, while holding cultural significance for Native Hawaiians.

Honolulu: Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano resumed erupting Friday by shooting an arc of lava 30 metres into the air and across a section of its summit crater floor.

It was Kilauea’s 31st display of molten rock since December, an appropriately high frequency for one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

---

The north vent at the summit crater began continuously spattering in the morning, and then lava overflowed a few hours later. The vent started shooting lava fountains in the afternoon.

The eruption was contained within the summit crater, and no homes were threatened.

A few lucky residents and visitors will have a front-row view at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. If the past is a guide, hundreds of thousands more will be watching popular livestreams made possible by three camera angles set up by the US Geological Survey.

Whenever she gets word the lava is back, Park Service volunteer Janice Wei hustles to shoot photos and videos of Halemaumau Crater — which Native Hawaiian tradition says is the home to the volcano goddess Pele. She said that when the molten rock shoots high like a fountain, it sounds like a roaring jet engine or crashing ocean waves. She can feel its heat from over a mile away.

“Every eruption feels like I am sitting in the front row at nature’s most extraordinary show,” Wei said in an email.

Kilauea is on Hawaii Island, the largest of the Hawaiian archipelago. It’s about 320 kilometres south of the state’s largest city, Honolulu, which is on Oahu.

Here’s what to know about Kilauea’s latest eruption:

A lower magma chamber under Halemaumau Crater is receiving magma directly from the earth’s interior at about 3.8 cubic metres per second, said Ken Hon, scientist-in-charge at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. This blows the chamber up like a balloon and forces magma into an upper chamber. From there it gets pushed above ground through cracks.

Magma has been using the same pathway to rise to the surface since December, making the initial release and subsequent episodes all part of the same eruption, Hon said.

Many have featured lava soaring into the air, in some cases more than 300 metres. The fountains are generated in part because magma — which holds gases that are released as it rises — has been travelling to the surface through narrow, pipelike vents.

The expanding magma supply is capped by heavier magma that had expelled its gas at the end of the prior episode. Eventually enough new magma accumulates to force the degassed magma off, and the magma shoots out like a Champagne bottle that was shaken before the cork was popped.

This is the fourth time in 200 years that Kilauea has shot lava fountains into the air in repeated episodes. There were more episodes the last time Kilauea followed this pattern: The eruption that began in 1983 started with 44 sessions of shooting fountains. Those were spread out over three years, however. And the fountains emerged in a remote area, so few got to watch.

The other two occurred in 1959 and 1969.