A look at the last year of Kīlauea's summit water lake

ANIMATED GIF: Saturday, July 25, marks the one year anniversary since water was first spotted at the bottom of Halema‘uma‘u, at the summit of Kīlauea. Over the past year, the summit water lake has grown to more than 270 m (885 ft) long and 131 m (430 ft) wide, with a surface area over 2.5 hectares (6 acres). The lake is over 40 m (130 ft) deep with a volume of approximately 480,000 cubic meters (125 million gallons)—equivalent to almost 200 olympic swimming pools. This animated image file (GIF) includes a series of telephoto images in a continuous loop showing the growth of the lake between August 2, 2019 and July 21, 2020, using approximately one image every 2 weeks. The apparent movement of the surrounding ground surface is not real—the shift is caused by slightly different camera angles on different days. USGS GIF by L. DeSmither.