Collapses common during significant drops in summit lava lake

On September 8, at 6:06 p.m. HST, much of the large ledge that had built up on the south side of the summit vent within Halema‘uma‘u collapsed. The top two images, captured by HVO's K2 and HT web cameras, show the summit vent before the collapse. A yellow arrow points to the ledge, which was formed by layers of lava stacking up during repeated high lake levels. The lower webcam images were captured minutes after the collapse. In the thermal images, note the difference in the lava lake surface before and after the collapse. K2cam shows the view from HVO and Jaggar Museum; HTcam is a thermal camera that looks down on the lava lake from the rim of Halema‘uma‘u.