Kilauea Volcano Update; Record Setting Eruption, 600+ Ft Lava Fountains

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]Kilauea just produced another spectacular episode  of lava fountaining on Hawaii's Big Island, ejecting fountains of lava to heights  of as much as 200 meters or 656 feet.

[00:00:11]This record setting event occurred  alongside some minor tephra emissions, seen here as many brownish gray particles. The  associated eruption plume rose to an altitude of up to 25,000 feet or 7,620 meters, resulting  in the issuance of a volcanic ash advisory.

[00:00:29]This all occurred across Kilauea's 48th eruptive  episode of sustained tall lava fountaining since December 23rd of 2024, with this episode lasting  for approximately 9 hours. It was a mostly below average sized eruptive episode, and emplaced  an estimated 5.6 million cubic meters of lava, further decreasing Kilauea's caldera floor  depth. All eruptive activity occurred within Kilauea's summit caldera so no structures were  ever at risk from advancing lava flows as these remained solely within the caldera. For the  5th episode in a row, only the north vent produced sustained lava fountains, while the  south vent despite producing many precursory small lava flows only produced very weak and  intermittent spattering. The rain which fell didn't really have any meaningful effect on the  observed eruptive activity, other than hindering USGS webcamera views via reduced visibility. Kilauea since December 23rd of 2024 has been undergoing predictable cycles of activity which  follow this pattern, which always ends in hours long periods of sustained tall lava fountaining.  This type of cyclical activity has occurred at Kilauea 3 other times, but none of these produced  so many distinct episodes of lava fountaining in a row, so what is ongoing is record setting, as it  just surpassed the 47 episodes the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent produced between 1983 and 1986. During the  18 months since episodic activity began at Kilauea's summit in late 2024, the collapsed  2018 caldera floor segment has become an average of 99.4 meters or 326.1 feet shallower  via the addition of 304.9 million cubic meters of molten rock, a truly impressive amount. Yet, it is unclear how much longer these eruptive episodes will continue to occur for,  as there is a definite slow downward trend in monthly lava effusion volumes. However,  if this trend hypothetically continues for a few more years, lava should completely  refill the 2018 caldera collapse segment around or before the end of December 2028. Episode 48 seemingly took a bit longer to occur than the prior 3 eruptive episodes, and  I owe this to two temporary slight tiltmeter decreases at Kilauea's summit, marking what in  my interpretation were slight deflation events.

[00:02:58]However, I do not think that magma was going  downrift or elsewhere, instead I think that the magma supply twice briefly paused. That is why  Kilauea erupted on June 1st instead of May 29th.

[00:03:11]And now, here's a brief overview  regarding the timeline of episode 48.

[00:03:16]Precursory lava effusion from the north  vent became near continuous at around 3:45 am local time on June 1st, but the  sustained lava fountaining would not truly begin until nearly an hour later at 4:40 am. It then only took 30 minutes for lava fountaining heights to rise to 200 feet, and another 10  minutes after that to rise to 350 feet. Peak lava fountain heights were subsequently reached  at 5:50 am, and by that time, minor amounts of tephra and fine ash had fallen on a small segment  of Highway 11, along with some nearby communities to the northeast. Afterwards, lava fountain  heights continually decreased until they ceased altogether at 1:37 pm local time on June 1st 2026. Although it is still way too early to guess when Kilauea's episode 49 might occur, if it does  end up happening, it could happen anywhere in my opinion between June 10th 2026 and July 4th 2026. As a final note, I would like to thank this channel's patrons on Patreon and channel  members on YouTube for supporting my work!