Kilauea Volcano Update; 900+ Ft Lava Fountains, Summit Lava Lake Returns

[00:00:00]Spectacular and beautiful. What you are  looking at is a strong and sustained lava fountain that Hawaii's Kilauea volcano produced  for approximately 8.3 hours yesterday on July 15th 2026, albeit at its peak intensity. That peak  intensity at 10:30 am saw fountains of basaltic composition molten rock reach heights of 290  meters or 950 feet. And, at that very moment of peak lava fountaining heights, approximately 300  cubic meters of lava were erupting every second.

[00:00:35]Meaning, it would hypothetically only take 8  and a third seconds to fill the same volume as an Olympic sized swimming pool. All of this  occurred solely from Kilauea's north vent, which is confined within the southwestern corner of its  summit caldera, where no residential structures are located. Meaning, that as long as people  stayed outside the narrow region where molten lava fragments could fall and did not enter closed  off areas of Kilauea's summit, in my opinion this latest eruptive episode was once again was  essentially harmless. Which is why it was another tourist friendly eruptive episode! Now, you might  be wondering why I am using the term "eruptive episode". The reason is that since December  23rd of 2024, Kilauea has been producing a fairly predictable cycle of activity with distinct  stages that has now repeated 51 times, and always ending in hours long periods of sustained lava  fountaining. During historical times, Kilauea has produced cycles of tall lava fountaining three  other times, but none of these have produced so many distinct episodes as the ongoing sequence. These 51 eruptive episodes have greatly reduced the depth of the summit caldera  segment that formed in 2018, as you can see by this before and after image  from the same vantage point 19 months apart.

[00:02:01]And, per images from the U.S. Geological Survey,  it appears that a long term lava lake may have returned to Kilauea's summit, albeit not a very  large one. As, on both July 7th and July 14th, a small 30 meter or 98 foot wide lava pond was  seen at the bottom of Kilauea's south vent, and yes that is the same vent that has only  produced precursory lava effusion events and no sustained lava fountains for the last  8 eruptive episodes. If this lava lake does not disappear or fully solidify between  eruptive episodes, then it means that at some level Kilauea is now continuously erupting! Fun! Kilauea's episode 51 of lava fountaining started after an 18 day long wait at 8:30 am local time  on July 15th. It took only 50 minutes for lava fountain heights to grow to 100 feet, and then  another 30 minutes to rapidly grow to 500 feet in height. At 10:06 am, lava fountains reached  heights of 650 feet, until peaking at 10:30 am at 950 feet. The eruption plume around this time  reached an altitude of 5,500 meters or 18,000 feet. Afterwards, lava fountain heights slowly  but surely dropped, over time, until the eruptive episode ended at 4:46 pm local time. In total,  5.05 million cubic meters of lava had erupted, with lava fountain heights roughly following  this chart. Overall, episode 51 was another instance of slightly higher than average peak lava  fountain heights and average lava effusion rate, but below average in terms of lava fountaining  duration and total lava volume erupted.

[00:03:50]While it is still too early to estimate when  episode 52 of lava fountaining might occur at Kilauea, if it does end up happening which in  my opinion it probably will, it will most likely begin sometime between July 25th 2026 and August  15th 2026. Stay tuned for more updates. As a final note, I would like to thank my new YouTube  channel member 1556cm for supporting my work!