Kīlauea Eruption Rate Drops, Lava Lake Crusting Over

There have been some notable changes on Kīlauea on Monday, November 8, 2021. The primary vent on the western wall of Halema'uma'u has dramatically reduced the supply of lava feeding into the lava lake over the course of a few hours. Tiltmeters around the summit recorded a change in ground slope over the last couple days. If you haven't made it up to see the lava inside Hawaii Volcanoes National Park you might want to in the next few days as this eruption could end rather abruptly. With the changes it's less likely to see any fountaining now, the glow is still there. While activity might be winding down, the last eruption that ended in May 2020 transitioned into very slow effusive rate and was able to sustain that for months. Time will tell and we will keep monitoring. Today's gas measurement provided by USGS has sulfur dioxide emissions at to 250 tonnes per day, down from 2,900 tonnes per day on November 5, 2021. Here is a time-lapse compiled from USGS thermal F1 camera images of the slowdown current into this evening: