I wondered about the world news today and the first headline was West Hawaii News. Hawaii is not a newsworthy place most of the time - its fame is its erupting volcanos. Kilauea has been erupting continuously since 1983 and the last one was in December 2020. So was the volcano erupting again? It seems instead, there are emotional eruptions over how nervous people are to get their vaccinations. Scolling further down to find their volcano news, the noteworthy item was the rapid rise of the lava lake. Something like 10 feet an hour. Here's the news from the official site.
Activity Summary: Kīlauea Volcano is erupting. Lava activity is confined to Halemaʻumaʻu with lava erupting from a vent on the northwest side of the crater. This morning, April 7, the lava lake was 225 m (738 ft) deep and remains stagnant over its eastern half. SO2 emission rates remain elevated at 850 t/day, last measured on April 5.
Activity over the past 10 hours has been characterized by three fissure vents on the north and northwest walls of the crater, the observatory said. Fountaining lava at these vents is estimated to be up to 82 feet high. The vents are feeding lava flows into the base of Halemaumau crater, which is being filled with a growing lava lake.
This is a volcano under constant monitoring. The last update is yesterday at 6:30pm with the colour code Orange for aviation and volcano alert level of Watch. What do they watch for? Sulfur dioxide emission rate, refill rates, lake observations of lava effusion. There are near-realtime webcam views of the lava lake here: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/webcams. Go take a look at the vast amoeba on electrical-like fire. In the hazard analysis is the monitoring of visible haze known as vog (volcanic smog).
The information above comes from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, one of five volcano observatories within the U.S. Geological Survey monitoring volcanoes and earthquakes in Hawaiʻi. There's more information HERE.
Finding out all of this about volcanos gives vivid meaning to the expression "under the volcano."
It seems to me that there are many volcanic sorts of images in the grunge and decay of our urban-built objects, particularly painted metal.
