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During this morning's overflight, USGS scientists captured this image of sunrise above Kīlauea's lower East Rift Zone. Fissure 8 continues to feed a channelized lava flow that reaches the ocean, forming a large plume at the coast (upper right).
During their overflight, scientists used a telephoto lens to photograph the surface of the fissure 8 lava channel. Incandescent lava is visible through pieces of darker crust that forms as the flow surface cools. Note the apparent symmetry on either side of the channel center, where lava flows more quickly than it does along the channel margins—a visual representation of flow velocity across the channel width.
Since early May 2018, the floor of Halema‘uma‘u Crater has dropped 450 m (about 1480 ft). Extensive cracking and faulting around the crater, along with inward slumping of the crater rim, has more than doubled its diameter. Like a balloon slowly losing air, subsidence occurs because magma in Kīlauea's shallow summit reservoir is moving into the East Rift Zone more rapidly than magma is being supplied from depth. Images collected during a helicopter overflight of the summit area on July 13, 2018, were used to produce this digital elevation model showing current conditions at Kīlauea.
Listen to the sounds of rockfalls at Kīlauea Volcano's summit in this short video taken from the northeast rim of the caldera. At 2:42 p.m. HST on July 12, 2018, a collapse/explosion event at Kīlauea's summit released energy equivalent to a magnitude-5.3 earthquake. Rockfalls that occurred in Halema‘uma‘u and along the steep summit caldera walls during the event can be heard in this video.
During a helicopter overflight on July 13, 2018, USGS scientists captured this image of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō. On April 30, 2018, the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō crater floor collapsed and an intrusion of magma migrated down Kīlauea's East Rift Zone, advancing below ground toward the lower Puna District, leading to a series of fissure eruptions in the Leilani Estates subdivision. Since then, detected volcanic activity at Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō has been minimal.
Clear conditions at Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō provided good views into the crater during a helicopter overflight on July 13, 2018. The steep crater rim is slowly slumping inward and downward. Rock rubble fills the base of the vent.
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