Kilauea Volcano is spectacular today.

There it goes!

Modest height fountains (50-100 m) and a long delay from the previous episode (2 weeks, just like the last time).

Live video feeds posted in #12, #20, and #54. (Though #54 seems to be having some data flow issues and is intermittent.)

[ETA: Someone pointed the nozzle sideways

Episode 31 was kind of crazy with the sideways fountain.

The main vent (shown below) sprayed "sideways" at about a 45-degree angle with lava reaching about 100 m during most of the 12 hour episode traveling as far as 300 m before striking the crater floor.

The "south vent" that reopened in episode 30 had small fountaining for part of the episode to about 10 m high and a new, "intermediate vent" opened between them higher up in the "cone" at some broken rocks that had a history of large gas emissions and glowing. That new "intermediate" vent reach maximum heights of 20-30 m.

The steady "sideways" plume with a fairly fixed direction established a single lava channel under the "landing zone" with tephra and splatter building some long structures on either side with modest height.

There are some nice pictures of the episode on the HVO site:



Finally a post eruption image of the aftermath shows the old "drain" in post #59 has been filled in, so the next time it overflows the lava is going to have to get a lot higher, near the top of the old rim. (I double checked against another view, but we don't need the extra image.)