Kīlauea volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island erupted on Tuesday in a nine-hour spectacular, shooting fountains of lava some 1,300 feet into the air, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The eruption generated “significant heat and ash,” USGS said, with some six inches of “tephra”—bits of volcanic material, ranging from glass-like particles to rocks and ash—accumulating on a nearby golf course.
Some glassy material, called “Pele’s hair” for its strand-like structure, traveled as far as the city of Hilo—some 30 miles away by car, USGS said. Over the course of the eruption Tuesday, Kīlauea released an estimated 16 million cubic yards of lava and sent up an ash plume that reached beyond 30,000 feet.
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A 24 hour gif of live webcam view of Kīlauea caldera and Halemaʻumaʻu crater
Kīlauea started erupting regularly in December 2024; Tuesday’s fiery display was the forty-third “eruptive episode” since then.
A gif of a thermal image of Halemaʻumaʻu from the west rim of the summit caldera
Kīlauea is a shield volcano, which means it is flatter and shorter than the classic conical peak of a composite volcano. But what they lack in height, they make up for in size—shield volcanoes are the largest volcanoes on Earth, being much wider than they are high. These volcanos often produce slow-moving lava flows. Kīlauea is among the planet’s most active volcanoes, and has been erupting for as long as humans have been around to document it.
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