The Lava Strikes Back

And the font color goes back to red, in honor of the slowly-rising lava lake level in Halema`uma`u crater. Last night I was invited to enter the caldera with two of the HVO scientists who wanted to check out the glow close up. And I survived!

This is a picture from the crater overlook, slightly to the east of the big vent, so you can see the different colors of the crater walls (the slope in the distance is where the HVO and Jaggar museum are). All photos and video in this post are property of USGS. The wall of the big vent is just barely in the bottom left hand corner...

This is the 180 degree view from the picture above, so you can see the thick plume, and Matt (a USGS volcanologist) is using a thermal camera to image through the plume. There are now two 'hot spots' within the vent where the lava can be observed using this camera.

Before I entered the caldera, I never really thought about what a volcano would sound like on a regular, relatively non-active basis. When I was looking over the ledge, down into the vent with the smelly plume in my face (I was wearing a respirator, don't worry), and my eyes burning, I heard the near-constant huffing of the released gas and a few ominously invisible, and rather loud, rockfalls. Basically, it sounded as though some frustrated creature was hurling glass China plates against a wall. Janet, another scientist, was trying to record these sounds with a fancy new microphone, although I'm not sure how successful it was.

Finally, here's a short video I took of the plume activity and the surrounding environment. We stayed until it started to get dark, in order to observe the glow. Unfortunately Matt and Janet weren't too impressed, but I thought it was great. Apparently, two months ago they could stand where we were and see the surface of the lava lake through the plume. Hopefully Pele will be generous again within the next few months!