Kilauea Volcano

Itā€™s a sad situation for sure. I just added the Hawaii News Now slide show widget to my web page which is pretty cool but, itā€™s sad to see someoneā€™s house being devoured by the lava and exploding in flames.

http://ucweather.org/volcanorpt.php

Please see this new section of the HVO web site for information on the ongoing activity at Kilauea Volcano:

Resources for 2018 Kilauea Lower East Rift Zone and Summit Activity
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/activity_2018.html

[size=83]Kilauea destroys 600 homes, marking its most destructive eruption in modern times

The number of homes destroyed by lava has reached 600 since Kilauea started erupting on May 3, 2018, marking its most destructive eruption in modern times and the most destructive in the United States since the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.

The number surpasses by far the 215 structures destroyed during Kilaueaā€™s earlier eruption cycle that began in 1983 and continued nearly nonstop over the next three decades. Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim, whose house was also recently destroyed, said Kilauea has never destroyed so many homes before in such a short period of time.
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Remarkable before/48 hours after slider picture in this Daily Mail article.

woa 8O

Another amazing video, this one of high speed lava flow from fissure 8 yesterday

Update: Probably a fake :frowning:

8O Wow!

Thatā€™s incredible! My guess on the speed would be 40-50 mph.

I agree! Itā€™s like watching a speeding train at a railroad crossing.

As amazing as this seems and with pieces of lava flying up and seeming to obey gravity, I still am skeptical.

Have any geological services validated this? Or helicopter views?

You could well be right Dale. I got the link from the twitter of someone who should know but thatā€™s no guarantee :dontknow: Fast lava" is generally just a few feet/second. The bird sounds worry me, I would have thought the noise from the lava flow would have been deafening.

Niko, believe me, Iā€™m in awe of nature as much as the next guy but way before the internet and editing tools, Iā€™ve seen many a fake which seems to, due to the spectacular nature, is quickly passed on for others to be in awe and enjoy.

The flow of lava down a very steep cone is not nearly that fast. Pyrotechnic blasts driven by explosive gas and water being depressurized and blowing is darned fast.

But look at the videos of the Colorado river with no more slope than the place shown, and water isnā€™t flowing that fast.

The puzzling thing is those darned pieces of lava being thrown up and then coming down, about as my intuition would expect them to.

Either this is real or someone is very very clever at faking it.

I checked the Park site and the NGS sites with news from there today, and neither had anything like this at all.

Iā€™m impressed with the mass of lava that has moved outward earlier but this volume would be enormous and one would think the NGS would be all over documenting and studying it.

Stay tuned, Iā€™m sure weā€™ll hear verification or debunking eventually. In the mean time, Iā€™m going to watch it again, for about the 30th time!

By no means scientific, but here are a couple things I found

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFgTOrf0gIA

At about 8:20 there are some military escorted press phtographers, and the frogs chirping are similar, but in footage at 2:00 or so there are flows at expected speed, and with more ā€˜lava noiseā€™ as one might expect.

Also, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWiohI78arM

with more footage of lava rivers and apparently the correct ambient noise. Part way throgh there is not a river but near a rift with very loud and impressive noise.

I realize not the same situation, but still with the lava being thrown up in the air, might be somewhat similar.

Some impressive, believable video from the volcano,
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kilauea-volcano-eruption-lava-river-195223684.html

At 1:20, 2:58 and again at 3:08 there is impressive flow. Not as fast as shown in the subject video, but still a wee bit faster than I would have guessed.

the noise, however is very scary.

This last video makes some of the motion seem faster by panned upstream, and without any landmarks for size one has no idea what the added visual effect is.

Current Kilauea lava flows are hottest, fastest of latest eruption, the video is geoblocked but the text has this quote ā€œOvernight, the lava was moving fast enough to cover about six football fields an hour, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientist Wendy Stovall.ā€. 600 yards/hour is only 0.35 miles an hour.

the original video is with a big zoom
i.e take from a long way a way
which makes it look faster
the video above does show very fast moving lava, especially in the center of the flow

Aha! That could be it :slight_smile: Like those huge images of the moon.

Hereā€™s a little more: I did find in that great scientific journal USAToday, this piece. No videos, but this discussion:

"Lava from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been spewing for over a month, but the thick, slow-moving lava has taken a new shape, transforming into a wide, hot, flowing river of lava traveling long distances.

The 2100-degree lava is flowing together into a molten red river running 9 miles from the fissure into the ocean at Kapoho. The transition into fast-paced lava moving about 200 yards per hour seen Monday is due the location of the fissure.

The fissure, the 8th of 24 fissures, is located in the lower east rift zone near Leilani Estates. The magma under the surface in this area is hotter, more fluid and less crystallized.

ā€œThe whole lower east rift zone has a plumbing system two miles below surface and it is delivering hotter magma at fissure 8, which is giving runnier lava thatā€™s flowing to the ocean,ā€ said Charles Mandeville, program coordinator for volcano hazards program at United States Geological Survey. "

I also saw on another maybe British Newspaper something about the temperature of the lava now erupting was 50 degrees Celsius hotter than previous lava and that relatively minor temperature increase made the stuff much more liquid. The expert said it was about as hot as the lava can get, now being at the same temperature as the mantel and hotter isnā€™t possible. Canā€™t verify it but sounds reasonable.

I guess we got a direct route to the earthā€™s innards now and its pouring out. Pretty impressive.

200 yards/hour is a far cry from the 45-50 mph that the other thing implied and certainly makes me think that this was mostly an optical illusion. And the shimmering of that kind of temperature looks like what youā€™d see in a blast furnace movie.

Doing a keyword search on Google of ā€œvideo of fast moving lava flowā€ expecting to see if that video was debunked but, it produced several references to that video.

This link has a close up shot of the lava flow. Interesting comment by kansasthunderman1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF3zLajnDNA

Even made it on CBS News.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/20180616201557-fast-moving-lava-from-fissure-8-at-leilani-estates-in-hawaii/

And AccuWeather
https://www.facebook.com/AccuWeather/videos/10156402985077889/

Iā€™m also surprised that nobody besides Dale is skeptical :? But I also havenā€™t found any official or reputable site suggesting that even the very fast lava is moving faster than a fraction of a mile per hour so Iā€™m inclined to believe Brianā€™s optical effect theory :dontknow: