COURTESY PHOTO BY DAVID JORDAN
Lava light reflects off fumes from Puu Oo cone in this picture taken before daybreak Sunday by Big Island photographer David Jordan. The brighter area to the right reflects where lava broke through the base of the cone and is flowing from it.
Lava flows reshape
Puu Oo landscape
HILO >> In the pre-dawn darkness, glowing streams of lava broke out at the base of Puu Oo cone, spreading into the surrounding volcanic desert and leaving the crater floor to collapse behind it.
That was Sunday morning -- and the lava is still flowing.
The eruption at Puu Oo, 10 miles into the wilderness east of Kilauea volcano's summit, has kept geologists on their toes the past few days.
Late last week, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory head Don Swanson noted that lava was spilling out of Puu Oo for the first time in six years.
A week earlier, following six months with no lava entering the ocean, the observatory's weekly "Volcano Watch" column was speculating on when flows would again become consistent enough to carry lava to the sea.
Not soon, apparently.
Following the brief spill-out on the east side of Puu Oo last week, flows returned to an old vent just beyond the west side of the crater.
On Sunday "a lot happened," as Swanson put it.
At 5:50 a.m., lava plowed under Puu Oo's south wall and flowed out of a newly created trench. Standing on a hill in the darkness six miles to the west, using a telephoto lens, photographer David Jordan caught the glow of the event.
The initial flow headed toward the sea but only reached a little more than a mile before drying up, a helicopter flight later revealed.
Other flows continued but stayed close to Puu Oo.
The lava oozing from the cone left little holding up the floor of the crater inside the cone walls.
The crater floor fell a few yards, although familiar features such as the Beehive Vent remained standing, Swanson said.
The entire cone sank a little, too -- about as much as a stack of 17 1/2 dimes. That's "very large," Swanson said.
Puu Oo has done bigger stuff in the past, said recently retired geologist Arnold Okamura.
In 1997 the floor of the crater fell nearly 500 feet, he said. That was accompanied by a 24-hour eruption two miles to the west at Napau crater.
The south side of Puu Oo is now "quite unstable," Swanson said. "No one should venture into the area."
Meanwhile, instruments show the summit of Kilauea filling with magma, perhaps before pushing it toward Puu Oo.
