July 9, 2025 — View of the growing tephra hill after episode 28 at Kīlauea

After episode 28 ended, USGS geologists inspected the tephra deposit southwest of the eruptive vents, in the closed area of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. The tephra continues to accumulate and build up a hill that is more than 80 ft (~25 m) high, covering parts of Crater Rim Drive. While new measurements will be made in the following days to ascertain how much new tephra was added during episode 28, it was clear from a precursory inspection that dense, glassy tephra bombs were from episode 28 were still cooling and covering a large part of the landscape. USGS photo by D. Downs.