Infamous Fissure #8!

I’ve been semi-obsessed the last few weeks by the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. Back in early May there was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the volcanic system, and then things got interesting (in the curse sense). By late May a fissure in the east rift zone was emitting lava at a rate (100 cubic meters per second) not recorded in our history of recording things like that.

All that lava came from a reservoir — the magma chamber — in the volcano, so Kilauea began experiencing “collapse events” as the summit subsided into the space left by the departed magma. These collapse events resulted in magnitude 5.3 (or so) earthquakes roughly every 32 hours (plus or minus a lot).

And a bunch of us interested parties were online chatting, watching, and waiting for the next collapse event!

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