Images

A long, hot hike was not needed to see red lava today. Vigorous spattering from Kīlauea Volcano's summit lava lake was visible from the Jaggar Museum Overlook in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park as of this afternoon. The lava lake surface, measured at 25 m (82 ft) below the vent rim this morning, was high enough for the spattering to be seen from afar.

Kīlauea Volcano's lava flow remains active, with pāhoehoe lobes, like the one shown here, slowly advancing on the coastal plain. Breakouts upslope of the leading edge continue to widen the flow margins. Today, the active flow front was approximately 850 m (0.5 miles) from the ocean, and 720 m (0.4 miles) from the road.

A zoomed-in view of the lava lake spattering.

This map shows recent changes to Kīlauea's East Rift Zone lava flow field. The area of the active flow field as of July 8 is shown in pink, while widening and advancement of the active flow as mapped on July 19 is shown in red. Older Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō lava flows (1983-2016) are shown in gray.

The flow remains active on the pali and coastal plain, with scattered breakouts of pāhoehoe lava. Over the past week, however, the leading tip of the flow has advanced only a short distance. Today, the flow front was 850 m (0.5 miles) from the ocean. In this photograph, the current lava flow is the lighter color area in the center of the photo.

Only a few short sections of road in Royal Gardens subdivision remain uncovered by lava. In this kipuka, about 200 m (220 yards) of Orchid Street is still exposed.

This photograph looks downslope at the uppermost section of the Episode 61g flow. The vent is in the lower left corner of the photo. Several collapses have occurred over the lava tube, and the trace of the tube can be seen by the fuming sources extending downslope.

The large hole on the northeast flank of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō remains open, providing a view of forked lava streams. Since the last overflight on Friday, July 15, the lava streams have started to crust over, reducing the glow in the pit.

This map is a georeferenced thermal image mosaic showing the distribution of active and recently active breakouts on the Pūlama pali and coastal plain. The thermal images were collected during a helicopter overflight on July 15. The episode 61g flow field as mapped on July 8 is outlined in yellow to show how the flow has changed.

The flow front remains active on the coastal plain, but has only moved about 60 m (~200 ft) closer to the ocean in the past three days. As of midday on July 15, the slow-moving pahoehoe is roughly 870 m (~0.5 mi) from the ocean. Activity upslope continues to widen the flow margins. The light gray surface in this image is the new pahoehoe of the 61G flow.

Aerial view of the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Coastal Ranger Station at the end of Chain of Craters Road with the active lava flow (61G) in the distance. Correlative thermal image highlighting the hot, active flow at the top portion of the photo (right).

This image shows a thermal map of the flow on the pali and coastal plain, created from airborne thermal images. White pixels are hot, and show areas of active surface breakouts. The background image is a satellite image collected before the current lava flow was active.

This satellite image was captured on Wednesday, July 13, by the Advanced Land Imager instrument onboard NASA's Earth Observing 1 satellite. The image is provided courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although this is a false-color image, the color map has been chosen to mimic what the human eye would expect to see.

This nitrogen-fixing lichen, Stereocaulon vulcani, is frequently abundant on ‘A‘ā lava flows on the Island of Hawai‘i, particularly in wet environments. Photo courtesy of Tim Tunison.

Surface breakouts remained active on the pali and coastal plain, but the leading tip of the flow has advanced little since mapping on Sunday. This morning, the flow front was about 940 m (0.6 miles) from the ocean. Activity upslope of the flow front was widening the flow margins. In this photo, the active flow is the lighter colored area.

Above the pali there are no surface breakouts, and lava is carried downslope within the subsurface lava tube system. The trace of the lava tubes is evident by the line of fuming point sources along the flow. Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, and the vent for the current flow, are in the upper left portion of the photo.

USGS hydrologist Mark Reid examines an extensional basin in the middle of the Oso landslide deposit.  The headscarp (near-vertical cliff at the back of the landslide) is visible at the top of the image.  The prominent tree is one of many that fell and became perched as the landslide spread out over the river valley.

The leading tip of the flow has moved only 40 m (130 feet) since yesterday's mapping and the lava activity at the tip was still very weak. The leading lava lobe had a dull surface and rough texture suggesting that it may have cooled somewhat within the flow interior.

About 200 meters (yards) upslope of the leading tip of the flow, more typical pāhoehoe was present - with a shiny, smooth surface.

The flow front activity was relatively weak today, but still active and advancing. The flow front at midday was about 1 km from the ocean (0.6 miles), having moved about 130 m (140 yards) since yesterday's mapping.

This pāhoehoe lava flow was advancing slowly across the gentle coastal plain on the southern flank of Kīlauea. The flow front was about 1 km (0.6 miles) from the ocean, having moved about 130 m (140 yards) since yesterday's mapping.