Volcano Watch

Pele continued her march to the sea in the two months since our last eruption update through Volcano Watch. Lava reached the ocean on July 12 and...

The English missionary, Rev. William Ellis, visited the summit region of Kīlauea 174 years ago this week and made the first written description of...

The North Kona Coast of the Big Island is fortunate to have several Hawaiian fishponds preserved. These ponds were major construction feats by which...

Last Friday, July 18, marked the two-year anniversary of the ongoing eruption of Soufriere Hills volcano on the small Caribbean island of Montserrat...

Following the June 30th M5.3 Kalapana earthquake, there seemed to be a misunderstanding of what the magnitude of an earthquake really means.
 

The earthquake that woke many Big Island residents at 5:47 a.m. on Monday, June 30, was the biggest on the island since February 1, 1994, and the...

Sometimes people call the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) and ask us if more gas is coming out of the volcano because air...

A popular local morning radio program had a contest early last week, and the question posed was "Where is the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?"...

Kīlauea's 14-year-old east rift zone eruption continues. Episode 55, ongoing since February 24, 1997, is characterized by shifting vent locations...

What volcano in the United States has been the most deadly since the country was founded? Mount St. Helens? Mount Rainier? Lassen Peak? Good guesses...

Great rift zones define the divergent boundaries in the mosaic of mobile tectonic plates that form the Earth's crust. From these divergent plate...

Once again, with the end of the spring semester, the Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes (CSAV) at the University of Hawaii at Hilo has begun its...

A few evenings ago the staff of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory took a field trip to Prince Kuhio Plaza to see the latest disaster film, VOLCANO...

Many residents have noticed the bright orange glow coming from Kīlauea's eruption site on recent nights. Judging from the phone calls we receive at...

The Mauna Ulu eruption on Kīlauea's east rift zone began 28 years ago this month, on May 24, 1969. For the next 2.5 years eruption was almost...

Hilo is situated on lava flows from two of the five volcanoes that form the Island of Hawai`i. However, most of the surface flows one drives by (and...

Regular readers of this column should not have been surprised last week by the news article stating that the earthquake risk on the Big Island is as...

The 55th episode of Kīlauea's east rift zone eruption has resumed with the vigor that characterized the eruption prior to January 30. We mark the...

I answered the phone last week to a perplexed voice asking, "The paper says Pu`u `O`o is erupting but there aren't any lava flows. How can it be...

What will the next eruption of Hualālai be like? The first step in answering that question is to find out what the last several eruptions were like...