Lava fountains spouting 200 feet and higher from Fissure 20, on May 19, 2018/USGS

Lava fountains soaring more than 200 feet into the sky, ash plumes 10,000 feet tall, rivers of molten rock, and plans to create an evacuation route along the Chain of Craters Road dominated talk Saturday at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park as the Kīlauea Volcano seemed in no mood to quiet down.

The day got off with a bang, as at midnight Hawaii time a huge explosion from Kīlauea created an ash plume extending 10,000 feet into the air. Friday and overnight into Saturday the Lower East Rift Zone saw increased lava fountaining from Fissure 17 (there are now 22 fissures).  This fissure used to be a line of lower spattering, but the outer edges of the spatter line stopped producing lava and vents closed down, focusing activity onto a “single point source.” 

Think of a water hose with holes in it.  When all but one hole is stopped up, the water emerges from the single remaining hole with greater force, causing a higher water fountain. At the time, this single lava point source produced a high fountain of molten rock that sustained a height of approximately 240 feet, with occasional bursts up to nearly 500 feet. Because of the fountaining and the lava stalled in that single point source, a cinder cone began forming around that area.  However, due to the fluidity of the entire eruptive situation, that cone may only be temporary.

Fissures 16 and 20 have merged together to “produce a voluminous line of spatter and lava fountaining."  This long fissure has produced channelized lava flow, that has broken off into several other lava flows within that channel (picture a river levee with upraised sides along the banks of the river) with spattering fountains moving toward the coast.  At the time, these flows were about 1.5 miles from the coastline, moving at a rate of about 300 yards per hour.

In other news, it’s the ninth day of park closure for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. The National Park Service and State of Hawaii Transportation Department were working with federal, state, and county agencies to prepare the Chain of Craters Road as an evacuation route if Highways 130 & 137 are cut off by the volcano's activity. 

Plans are to include removal of the solidified lava flow from the 2016-2017 lava flow (aka 61g -- volcanic episode #61 and the “g” represents the vent – as in vent a, b, c, d, etc.) and prepare this road for emergency use while taking measures to prevent adverse impacts to the park’s cultural and natural resources.  Highway 130 runs from Hilo down to Pahoa and the Leilani Estates and Hwy 137 parallels the coastline.

Because it’s still difficult to predict just how long this eruptive event will last, geologists are trying to figure out predictive warning signs for future explosions. These signs are along the line of geophysical signals, such as earthquakes and the levels of tremors associated with gas release coming out of the vent. They are trying to identify patterns that might be consistent with these explosions and try to find some characteristic of seismicity, but have thus far found nothing definitive.