The brooding, ominous character of this scene appealed greatly to me, as a fan of deep and dark clouds related to severe storms. However, like the night before, the clouds here only were low stratus, and steam venting off the crater walls, with smaller steam discharges from just above the rim in both the foreground and distance. The lava lake had begun rising and oscillating more while we were there—unknown to anyone at the time, the start of the buildup that led to the great flushing of magma from this and the Puu Oo vent to the east, down an underground drain into the Leilani Estates fissure eruptions the following spring and summer. It may be impossible to reproduce this photo again, not just because of the specific cloud and steam arrangement, but because the early–mid-2018 eruption completely drained this crater into a deep funnel shape with unstable and unsupported walls, causing numerous side-collapse, slumping and landslide events strong enough to register as earthquakes above magnitude 5. Those drastically altered the shape of this crater so that, even if lava pushed up through the accumulated rubble to fill again in years or decades to come, the distribution of the terrain and lava lake would be quite different.
3 WSW Volcano HI (29 Dec 17) Looking SSE
19.4197, -155.2879Ominous Day at the Lava Lake
The brooding, ominous character of this scene appealed greatly to me, as a fan of deep and dark clouds related to severe storms. However, like the night before, the clouds here only were low stratus, and steam venting off the crater walls, with smaller steam discharges from just above the rim in both the foreground and distance. The lava lake had begun rising and oscillating more while we were there—unknown to anyone at the time, the start of the buildup that led to the great flushing of magma from this and the Puu Oo vent to the east, down an underground drain into the Leilani Estates fissure eruptions the following spring and summer. It may be impossible to reproduce this photo again, not just because of the specific cloud and steam arrangement, but because the early–mid-2018 eruption completely drained this crater into a deep funnel shape with unstable and unsupported walls, causing numerous side-collapse, slumping and landslide events strong enough to register as earthquakes above magnitude 5. Those drastically altered the shape of this crater so that, even if lava pushed up through the accumulated rubble to fill again in years or decades to come, the distribution of the terrain and lava lake would be quite different.
3 WSW Volcano HI (29 Dec 17) Looking SSE
19.4197, -155.2879