USGS webcam shows episode 41 at the summit of Kīlauea

(BIVN) – Crews cleared the roads inside Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, and used whatever tools were at their disposal to reopen parking lots buried in ash and tephra during the high lava fountains of Episode 41. 

The ongoing eruption at the summit of Kīlauea is currently paused, and all signs point to another lava episode in the comings weeks.  

On January 24th day, witnessed the 8-hour spectacle, firsthand. Brant Wolf and Cindy Devereux were staying at Volcano House on the day of the eruption. 

“Yesterday morning, we started hearing a sound that was like a jet engine noise,” said Wolf, “and we looked out our window and the volcano was just erupting like crazy.”

“This stuff just started falling from the sky and it covered everything,” Wolf added. “You couldn’t look up, because it would hit you in the face. It was just raining down.”

“It’s all crunchy,” commented Devereux “It’s a Pele’s hair and tephra. It’s just in everything.”

Tephra found in Mauna Loa Estates, photo from video by Daryl Lee

The fallout extended beyond the national park boundary. Tephra was hurled as far away as Mauna Loa Estates. 

In the nearby Volcano Village, residents and business owners were out sweeping-up the next morning. 

Eli Schonbrod, the head chef of Lanikai Brewing Co., says he has been living in the area for about 13 years. He says he has “gone through a lot of eruptions, and it’s the first time this has happened to the village,” that he has ever seen. Schonbrod noted he will have to clear the tephra from the Lanikai solar panels, as well. 

Volcano residents Randy Ashley and Sharron Faff are now retired from their days at National Park. This event was unlike anything they had seen before. 

“We used to go hiking with the new volunteers and the new rangers to find little pieces of (tephra) a mile out from the road, or down by the ocean, so that we could show people what it was,” said Faff, a former ranger and park volunteer. “Well, now it’s in the trees. It’s everywhere.”

Volcano residents Randy Ashley (right) and Sharron Faff (left)

“We’re going to have to get our roofs cleaned and we have to get our top of our tanks cleaned so we can get back on the catchment system for our water,” said Ashley.

“Because we’re on a volcano, we can’t put in county water,” Faff explained. “So, everybody up here has catchment tanks like this big one right behind me. Now, this big one holds about 10,000 gallons of water. And all that water comes from the sky. Whenever we have an eruption, which has been happening every couple of weeks lately, what we’ve been doing is un-attaching our water system coming from off of the roof. We don’t want (tephra) to get into the tank because we don’t want that to have it go through the filter system, that water with all the chunks and pieces and little pieces of Pele’s hair.” 

“So, we have to detach our system and leave it detached until after the eruption because we never know which way the wind’s going to blow,” Faff said. “Like this time, we were not expecting quite this much debris in our yards.” 

“Whenever I tell somebody on the mainland that I live three miles from a volcano, they think you’re living next to Mount St. Helens,” said Ashley. “That’s not the kind of volcanoes we have here. But, this has been very unique. What you’re seeing in the village right now has been going on since December of ’24, when this first started. It’s just the trade winds blow all this stuff mostly out into the desert. Yesterday, we had the Kona winds and high light winds up high, which blew it all the way down onto this side, which we normally don’t have.” 

The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory says the next episode, 42, could occur sometime between February 10 and February 20. The forecast window is based on the current inflation trend at the summit, but there is no way of knowing this far out what the weather conditions will be when the high lava fountains eventually occur, which means the community could see a repeat of this rare event.