Lava?

[scrapgeek]

Anyone who has been in the last few weeks... what is the current lava situation? Can it currently be seen from the ship? I was told that the recent eruptions disrupted things and changed up where the lava is viewable from.

[doylejr]

Anyone who has been in the last few weeks... what is the current lava situation? Can it currently be seen from the ship? I was told that the recent eruptions disrupted things and changed up where the lava is viewable from.

 

 

check here every day

 

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/activity/kilaueastatus.php

[funmama]

Anyone who has been in the last few weeks... what is the current lava situation? Can it currently be seen from the ship? I was told that the recent eruptions disrupted things and changed up where the lava is viewable from.

 

We are just back from the May 7th sailing. The ship (POA) did not even advertise a nighttime sailby the night we left Hilo -- no lava would be visible.

 

We had booked a helicopter tour during the day with Blue Hawaiian and although not expecting to see any lava, we did see some "bubbling" within the crater. We were excited to see even that as I knew things had been pretty dormant since the mid-March activity.

 

Not sure at this point you'll be able to see any lava unless by air but things can change daily so you never know!

[sassyredhat]

I thought most of the visable lava was seen in the Kona sail-by. I don't think any ships make port calls there now.

Lucky for us, our 2 previous cruises did that sail=by., but on the last one, very little could be seen.

Pat

[lv2bgoofy]

The POA stops in Hilo and Kona both......but I believe that the lava show was when leaving Hilo not Kona......

[WestfieldTraveler]

Anyone drive to the end of Chain of Craters road lately (see here: http://www.nps.gov/havo/planyourvisit/drive.htm ) and walk on the lava field? When we did this several years ago you could walk on recently cooled lava where just a few feet/inches away you could see the hot lava and feel the heat!

 

Just wondering if that was the current condition, or if it only exists when lava is flowing into the ocean?

[WestfieldTraveler]

Anyone drive to the end of Chain of Craters road lately (see here: http://www.nps.gov/havo/planyourvisit/drive.htm ) and walk on the lava field? When we did this several years ago you could walk on recently cooled lava where just a few feet/inches away you could see the hot lava and feel the heat!

 

Just wondering if that was the current condition, or if it only exists when lava is flowing into the ocean?

[Yellow Lab's Rule]

I heard since the Japan earthquake/Tsunami that the laval flow into the ocean has stoped. That a minor earthquake at the sametime on the Big Island closed up the vent.

[sceptic]

The change in the activity in Kilauea occurred on March 5, six days before the earthquake in Japan. There is zero correlation between the two. what happened at Kilauea was a significant disruption in the magma conduit to the east rift zone, where the lava previously rose to the surface AT pu'u O'o, then farther downslope to another vent, and fromm there flowed through lava tubes to the ocean near Kalapana (outside the park).

 

Go to http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/update/images.html

 

and scroll down to March 7 to see the amazing time-lapse video of the collapse of the lava lake in Pu'u O'o that occurred a few days earlier. What's happened since is a brief period of low-level fountaining upslope of Pu'u O'o, a period of quiet, and a return of lava to the PU'u O'o crater. And it's just there, not farther down the rift or up the rift. See the above website, click the webcam link, and then click the pu'u o'o link. This view is very dramatic, but cannot be seen (except glow reflected off clouds). This lava lake, far from any roads and appallingly dangerous to approach via the ground, is the only surface lava currently on the east rift zone.

 

As of now, the conditions are stable. Something must change for lava to have the opportunity to begin flowing to the shore, and then it is typically several weeks before the lava actually gets downslope. This could start tomorrow, the next day, or months from now.

 

As long as conditions remain as they are there is no lava to be seen at all from the ship. You might possibly see a distant, faint glow on the clouds, but that's all.

[kapoho2]

Come to think of it, I have not seen the POA cruise by on its way to the lava viewing in the past ?? weeks. We watch it cruise by at about 8:30pm every Tuesday evening when the lava is flowing, but now I believe the ship is leaving Hilo and and heading on the northern route to Kona.

[ohioNCLcruiser]

Correct we are not doing the Lava now because you can't see anything from the ocean. It's been like this for several weeks now.

 

James

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