August 27, 2026 — USGS staff repair monitoring equipment at Kīlauea summit

After digging out and removing this volcanic gas monitoring site from a hole in the tephra deposit at Kīlauea summit, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) field technicians make repairs to the station including changing a solar panel that was cracked from tephra (volcanic rock fragments) impacting it. Tephra from the ongoing episodic Kīlauea summit eruption, which began on December 23, 2024, blankets the ground in this photo and has buried many volcano monitoring stations downwind of the summit, requiring HVO staff to dig out the sites and often make repairs. USGS photo taken on August 27, 2026, by L. DeSmither.