(BIVN) – Lava overflows at the Kīlauea summit vents ended early Thursday morning, suggesting a delay in the start of the high fountaining phase of episode 36.

“Kīlauea’s summit inflation has stalled over the past several days, lengthening the forecast window,” the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory reported.

Models still suggest the likely forecast window for the anticipated high lava fountains is between now and Tuesday, November 11th.

From the USGS HVO update issued on Thursday:

Summit Observations:

Since 4 a.m. HST this morning there has been a pause in overflow activity at the north and south vents. Preceding this period, the north vent produced a number of large overflows with many of these events developing hemispherical dome fountains. Overflows and the dome fountains had very little spattering until drainback, indicating that mostly degassed magma is being erupted at this time.

The summit has not shown strong changes in deformation in the last 24 hours. The Uēkahuna tiltmeter (UWD) has recorded approximately 0.5 microradian of deflationary tilt over the past 24 hours yielding 25.2 microradians of inflationary tilt since the end of episode 35. Tremor patterns until midnight were consistent with periods of low tremor correlating with pond filling and/or overflows followed by longer 15-75 minute tremor spikes related to drainback. That pattern changed just after 1 a.m. HST with more constant and higher tremor marked by small spikes (typically 1 minute) of high tremor occurring sporadically.

Plumes of gas continue from both vents this morning and sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas emissions remain at background levels, typically between 1,200 and 1,500 tonnes per day. Yesterday wind conditions were favorable and the SO2 array southwest of the vent detected “puffs” of gas related to drainback events as is expected during gas pistoning events.

Episode 35 lava fountains began at approximately 8:05 p.m. HST on October 17 and ended at 3:32 a.m. HST on October 18. South vent fountains reached heights of nearly 1,500 feet (460 meters) and north vent fountains reached heights of about 1,100 feet (330 meters). These were the highest single fountain and highest pair of fountains seen during this eruption so far. Episode 35 fountains produced an estimated 13 million cubic yards (10 million cubic meters) of lava. The combined average eruption rate was over 500 cubic yards per second (400 cubic meters per second) from the dual fountains. Lava flows from the fountains covered about two thirds of the floor of Halemaʻumaʻu crater.