One of the world’s most violent volcanoes Kilauea erupted Wednesday on Hawaii’s Big Island, which was also captured in a video by the US Geological Survey. The agency said the ashes as a result of the dynamic activity may pose a risk to aviators.
The eruption occurred after a pause of nearly six months, which lasted 61 days.
The USGS captured the video at Kilauea’s Halemaumau crater, where the lava came out into the air from the opening of the mountain.
According to the agency, the eruption poses no risk to the public and noted that lava has not been ejected further than the crater’s floor. It did raise the volcano alert warning to red.
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory wrote in a statement Wednesday: “At approximately 4:44am on June 7, 2023, the [USGS’] Hawaiian Volcano Observatory detected glow in Kilauea summit webcam images indicating that an eruption has commenced within Halema’uma’u crater in Kilauea’s summit caldera, within Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.”
The observatory regarded the initial stages of the eruption as “dynamic” and described the activity on the volcano.
“The activity is confined to Halema’uma’u and the hazards will be reassessed as the eruption progresses,” the agency said.
The experts who study volcanoes noted that the activity at Kilauea began Tuesday evening, increasing ground tremors and deformation near the mountain’s summit.
David Phillips, a deputy scientist leading the team at the HVO said activity made researchers fairly confident an eruption would occur today, according to Hawaii News Now, adding that “every eruption’s a little different.”
“For the one that happened this morning, we had 65 minutes of precursory activity that we were pretty confident would lead to an eruption in this case,” he added.
He opined that the activity levels at the mountain had increased in recent weeks, catching their attention and prompting them to adjust the volcano alert level.
“For the past couple of weeks, things have been elevated, but it wasn’t quite at the level where we saw direct movement of magma towards the surface and we saw that this morning, about an hour before the eruption,” Phillips remarked.