Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Photo and Video Chronology - Kīlauea - May 25, 2018

May 25, 2018

Activity continues along Kīlauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone

 

Activity continues in Kīlauea Volcano's lower East Rift Zone...
Aerial view of the active ocean entries at Kīlauea Volcano’s lower East Rift Zone captured during this morning's HVO overflight. An ongoing hazard at the ocean entries is laze. As hot lava boils cool seawater, a series of chemical and physical reactions create a mixture of condensed acidic steam, hydrochloric acid gas, and tiny shards of volcanic glass. Blown by wind, this plume creates a noticeable downwind haze, known as "laze" (short for lava haze). Laze is irritating to the lungs, eyes and skin.
Lava and a spatter cone
Activity at fissure 6 this morning (May 25, 2018). Lava fountains have built a small spatter cone (black mound) from which lava was spilling out onto the surface and flowing into a small pond (left of the cone).

 Explosions continue at the summit of Kīlauea

plume from a crater
View of a rising ash plume from Halema‘uma‘u, a crater at the summit of Kīlauea, late yesterday (May 24, 2018), as seen from the caldera rim near Volcano House. USGS scientists are stationed at this vantage point to track the ongoing summit explosions.
This explosion at Kīlauea Volcano's summit, which occurred just after 6:00 p.m. HST on May 24, 2018, produced an ash cloud that rose to 10,000 feet above sea level. Moderate trade winds were blowing to the southwest at the time, and light ash fell in downwind locations. Earthquakes in the summit area continue at a moderate rate, as does deflation of the summit region, both of which reflect the withdrawal of magma from the summit.

 Fissure complex produces a Pāhoehoe flow

Fissure 21 produced a Pāhoehoe lava flow that oozed onto Kaupili Street in the Leilani Estates subdivision. Video 1 shows the flow on May 25, around 2:15 a.m. HST. Video 2 shows lava oozing over a berm on May 24, around 6:00 p.m. HST. Burning asphalt created the black smoke seen in the video as the lava flow advanced down the street.

 

Aerial of lava flows
Fissures 6 (left) and 13 (right), with lava flows merging into one channel that flows into the ocean at the western-most entry. Note plume in distance at the ocean entries (top left). Photo is from an overflight at mid day.

Get Our News

These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.

Was this page helpful?