Kilauea Volcano is spectacular today.

dlamberth said:

Happening now - Live

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A new camera. I think it is from the position as the photo in post #13. (And this episode ended about an hour ago. Until next time.)

Episode 23 had been sputtering all day through the preliminary stage, but it seems to be going off now. This is the view of the initial and narrow fountains visible as it has been building a small spatter code in the vent's crater that is creating a nice nozzle effect. This image is from the camera in post #20 (also see posts #5 and #12).



It burst out into big fountains about 20 minutes before this post at 16:36 local time (see time stamp) and will be on the "roll back for 12 hours.

dlamberth said:

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Some of the video used (the stuff from Ep 23) in that video are also available with other images at:

Photo & Video Chronology — May 25, 2025 — Kīlauea Episode 23

The most interesting picture is the last one that shows that a blob of lava that was still fluid hit above the rim.

Like the prelude to Episode 23, the volcano is now in a period of occasional, intermittent, but energetic spray of hot bits coming out. It kind of looks like a big spray of sparks. There haven't been too many since day break, but there was a nice event at 5:15 local time this morning that is visible in the "Cam 3" video about 4 hours ago (video link in post #20). I suspect will see some more vigorous activity in the next 24 hours.

The big table of episodes from this eruption now has columns for erupted lava volume and fountain heights. The last episode at about 350 m (1150 ft) was the highest topping two episodes around April first that reached 325 m.

Eruption Information

Bit of a thread hijack attempt here .. but Mt Etna also 'let rip' (again) on Monday:

Hans Blaster said:

Like the prelude to Episode 23, the volcano is now in a period of occasional, intermittent, but energetic spray of hot bits coming out. It kind of looks like a big spray of sparks. There haven't been too many since day break, but there was a nice event at 5:15 local time this morning that is visible in the "Cam 3" video about 4 hours ago (video link in post #20). I suspect will see some more vigorous activity in the next 24 hours.

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Boy I missed that one. Got fooled by a little bit of spatter. It got going in earnest at sunset last night and is still going, but the most spectacular stuff is from 22:30 to about 00:30 (3-5 hours back on the videos at posting time). The V3 cam in post #20 has a good view.

Hans Blaster said:

Boy I missed that one. Got fooled by a little bit of spatter. It got going in earnest at sunset last night and is still going, but the most spectacular stuff is from 22:30 to about 00:30 (3-5 hours back on the videos at posting time). The V3 cam in post #20 has a good view.

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The whole episode took place in the dark. AfarTV posted a nice 9 minute clip of the highest phase of the fountains. They reached about 300 m/ 1000 ft. What caught my eye was the still red-hot lava striking the upper wall of the crater on the left edge of the plume and the same hot blobs striking over the top. (I look forward to the surface survey -- perhaps tomorrow.)


Some statistics: the thickest build up in the crater is a little over 60 m. From looking at the contour maps, as of 2 episodes ago the "flat" parts below the cones on that end are at least 30 m higher than they were on 23 Dec.

The Jun 4th episode (#24) broke records for height at 1200 ft (365 m).

I came across this video mostly shot from across the caldera at the viewing area:

It looks like Episode 25 is about to start. What looks like the preliminary activities are underway. It has gone from occassional spattering to small fountains with a little overflow that then retreat back down the pipe and repeats. It could go off fully in a couple of hours or a couple days. (It is sometimes a fickle volcano.)

Hans Blaster said:

It looks like Episode 25 is about to start. What looks like the preliminary activities are underway. It has gone from occassional spattering to small fountains with a little overflow that then retreat back down the pipe and repeats. It could go off fully in a couple of hours or a couple days. (It is sometimes a fickle volcano.)

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It is starting now. First part of the fountaining is still fairly low, but continuous. USGS YT feeds in posts #5, #12, #20

Episode #26 is underway. This one was a little different for the start. Instead of many hours of "gas pistoning" where the lava would rise to the top of the vent, briefly overflow and then retreat for 5-15 minutes, it just skipped that and went straight to the "continuous overflow" phase where low-level fountaining and overflows occurred for about 2 hours before the big fountains broke out.

About 1.5 hours into the big fountains visible on the live YT feeds from three angles in posts #5, 12, and 20. (12 hour look back time on feed, event will last from 6-18 hours.)

I was going to post the images of the above the rim build up of tephra (light-weight, crunch gravel like lava rocks) now over 10 m thick in places from the last few eruptions (last 3 exceeded 350 m, this one looks similar), as a warm up to this episode, but here is anyway:

Photo & Video Chronology — June 16, 2025 — Mauna Loa GPS Campaign and Kīlauea's Growing Tephra Deposit

As we await Episode 27, a small update on the assessment of Episode 26 which broke a new record for height. The latest episode reached 380 m (1250 ft). The tephra continues to build up. The mound above rim has built up to 20 m thick.

More fun photos:

Photo & Video Chronology — June 18 & 20, 2025 — Before and during episode 26 at Kīlauea summit

There is a time-lapse video of the Episode 25 and 26 eruptions in that link.

Today there is some new content on the ongoing, but currently paused eruption as we await episode 27 in a few days.

First a few new images from drone over flight including a rather cool look down "the pipe" of the active vent showing lava 10-20 m below the surface:

Photo & Video Chronology — June 27, 2025 — Kīlauea summit overflight

There is also an entry on the weekly "Volcano Watch" newsletter about the tephra build up above the rim. There is an animated GIF showing the tephra build up from a distance. I would insert the photo, but some people are not fond of auto activated media on sites like this (including me.)

Volcano Watch — Where does Kīlauea tephra go? The answer is blowin' in the wind

From yesterday there was also another batch of images. One shows a geologist preparing the drone flight above. At his feet you can get a good look at what the tephra is like and on the other side of the SUV tracks a 25-m pu'u (hill) made of this tephra. But, I really want to talk about the map in that link, which I'll do in the next post...

The new map shows how the Dec 23, 2025 to present eruption has been filling the deep crater formed in 2018 that has been filling with prior eruptions from Dec 2020 to 2023. Before 2018, the old Halema'uma'u was a roughly circular crater about 100 m deep and 1 km across located in the lightest green and yellow, and light orange regions in the map below (30-60 m thick deposit region). In 2008 a vent opened up in the south part of the crater and created a shaft with a standing lava lake in it. During the 2018 eruption, about a billion cubic meters (1 cubic kilometer) of lava eruped down slope in the Lower East Rift Zone, much of it from the storage region below the summit crater. That triggered a step-by-step collapse during the summer of 2018 that lowered the old crater and a section of the old caldera that has been labeled the "drop down block" which is on the right in the darker green and the uncovered parts just east of it.





About a year after 2018 eruption ground water started to form a lake at the bottom of the 500 m deep crater. That lake was vaporized in the opening hours of the Dec 2020 eruption inside the pit. During that night, water vapor mixed with the lava pouring down the crater wall and made a block of lower-density lava with lots of air bubbles in it. It became a floating island that floated on top of the lava lake that ended up about 220 m deep with that block of fluffy lava floating on top. WIth the eruption over, the top crusted over the lake and while the floating island would stop moving around like a raft, the subsequent eruptions in late 2021 through mid 2023 would inflate lava into the lake and the island would rise with the crusted surface of the lake. This can be seen in the "bump" midway across the profiles at the bottom of the map in the magenta line (showing the end of the first eruption) and straight above it at the end of the 2021-22 eruptions. As the crust cap would rise, lava would ooze out the edge to build a wider floating crust. At mid 2023 about 180 million cubic meters of lava had erupted in total and filled the deepest parts of the crater to the edge of the "down dropped block". The Fall 2023 eruption occurred in the "down dropped block" and the shallow lavas next to it on the east side of the crater. This lava mostly flowed over the top of the crusted and cooling lava lake. The dark green features on the right side of the new lava are thin spots in the new flows where it covers the cones from the Fall 2023 eruption. Nearly 20 million more cubic meters erupted in that eruption. Activity in the summit crater stopped for 15 months. During that gap there were two brief eruptions on the upper SW rift zone (June 2024) and middle E rift zone (Sep 2024).

The current eruption began on Dec 23, 2024, at the far west edge of the crater at the margin of the prior lava. It built a small cone around 2 vents marked with white circles on the west end of the crater. The cone/vent structure and the "splash down" for much of the fountains is roughly the red region with new lava 70-100 meters thick with lest thick lavas in the flows away from the crater/vent complex. About 100 million cubic meters has erupted in this eruption over 26 episodes spaced about 1 week apart. (A 50% increase in total erupted lava volume since the collapse.) The grayscale elevation map shows the profile before the eruption without the tephra deposits west of the crater.

Episode 27 is winding up now. Smaller fountains with continuous effusion have been going on for couple hours and are slowly growing. The big ones will come soon. As usual the live streams in posts #5, #12, and #20 give the best views you'll find of it happening.

Hans Blaster said:

Episode 27 is winding up now. Smaller fountains with continuous effusion have been going on for couple hours and are slowly growing. The big ones will come soon. As usual the live streams in posts #5, #12, and #20 give the best views you'll find of it happening.

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Episode 27 was quite spectacular. Not quite as high (340 m) as the maximum (380 m), it sustained high fountains longer than recent eruptions (almost 11 hours). This was probably due to the weak activity of the south vent which barely got going at all.

Here are some images from the episode:

Photo & Video Chronology — June 29, 2025 — Kīlauea Episode 27


A new episode is brewing and is in the preliminary phases. That could last a few hours or a couple days and then go off... Stay tuned.