Volcano Watch

When lava flows from an erupting vent or from an active lava tube, scientists face the challenge of determining, or forecasting, which areas are...

Lava is not fire. People sometimes talk about lava as fire, as in "fire fountain," "curtain of fire," and "river of fire." Most realize that these and...

Volcanic activity often results in various forms of ground motion. The scale of this motion, or deformation, to use the scientific term, ranges from...

In 1912, when Thomas Jaggar dug a cellar to house a seismograph on the north rim of Kilauea's caldera, there was only one other volcano observatory on...

On May 19, 1916, at 7:15 a.m., Mauna Loa began to erupt at about the 3,355 m (11,000 ft) elevation on the southwest rift zone. A mushroom-shaped cloud...

One of the basic objectives for seismographic networks is monitoring and maintaining records of earthquakes and other seismic sources. At the Hawaiian...

Pu`ukapukapu sits atop the most imposing cliff along the south coast of Kilauea, towering over the back-country camp site of Halape and dropping 320 m...

Lava has been a frequent visitor at Pu`u `O`o cone these past few weeks. It has flooded the crater floor and erupted from vents around the cone...

One evening a couple of weeks ago, the summit of Kilauea began to deform at an impressive rate. Although the ground tilt and associated tremor caused...

April is "Tsunami Awareness Month" in Hawai`i. Tsunami is the deadliest natural hazard in Hawai`i. The month of April is chosen to remind people of...

Kīlauea has had many explosive eruptions in the past. Fortunately, we have no evidence that the volcano is building to another one. But it is prudent...

How big is an eruption? This is a short question with a long answer. Volcanologists, like other people, judge the size of something by comparing it to...

From time to time, we get calls from people who are writing about Kilauea, hoping to confirm the idea that Kilauea is the most active volcano on Earth...

A heightened awareness of earthquakes usually follows large and destructive ones, like those occurring in Turkey and El Salvador in 1999 and 2001...

A number of hills, elongate in an upslope-downslope (mauka-makai) direction, rise 30-425 m (100-1,400 feet) above the surrounding gentle slopes of...

Wouldn't it be nice to have eruption forecasts as rich in detail as our current weather forecasts, watches, and warnings? "This is your Hawai'i County...

Over the past couple of weeks, the international competition at the XIX Olympic winter games has captivated winter sports enthusiasts around the world...

As many of you die-hard eruption fans already know, lava is no longer entering the ocean, for the first time since last May. The tube leading to the...

Every year about Super Bowl time, Dick Fiske and Tim Rose, volcanologists from the Smithsonian Institution, join HVO's staff for 2-3 weeks to...

At dawn on January 17, 2002, the residents of Goma, a city of 500,000 along the eastern border of the Republic of Congo, awoke to glowing red skies...