Kīlauea Weekly Report: June 15, 2021

A third week of relative quiet passes on Kīlauea, though earthquakes remain slightly elevated near the volcano’s summit, upper east rift, and nearby south flank. No glow is visible from the recent eruption’s West Vent, nor from the crusted lava lake surface, though temperatures from the vent and a handful of small spots “around the rim and in local cavities” remain hotter than their surroundings, though still well below molten lava temperatures according to this week’s USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory update. The baseline ground tilt continues to slowly increase as it has over the past month, occasionally interrupted by less frequent deflation-inflation cycles, with one event in each of the past two weeks. The summit continues to swell based on the GPS cross-caldera distance measurement, also at a slightly increased rate for the past two weeks, and together with the ongoing seismicity intensely focused in the summit and upper east rift connector, indicates that magma is still building underground. The upper east rift between Maunaulu and Puʻuʻōʻō, still within Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, is also refilling with magma according to USGS-HVO monitoring data and reports, and does show some seismicity within the rift zone during the past week, but much less focused than in areas up-rift. Instead, there are earthquakes dispersed across the nearby south flank, suggesting that growing pressure in that part of the rift is pushing the mobile flank and distributes the seismicity across its wider base as a consequence. On the south flank, a magnitude 3.7 earthquake on June 12th occurred in the same area as the magnitudes 3.6, 3.4 and 4.2 on May 23rd, a seeming catch point at the western edge of the currently mobile area. This pattern of adjustment is not imminently alarming, as the volcano can sustain slightly elevated activity for weeks to months before a larger change occurs, including the possibility of an eruption near the summit or currently active rift areas. The current level of seismicity is approaching that observed in the months ahead of the 2020 eruption, though it is still roughly half of the rate of the final pre-eruption weeks. The wait and watch continues, as the transition to Kīlauea’s next lava showing slowly advances. #Kilauea2021 Join our weekly live video review of Kīlauea and Maunaloa volcanoes, at 5pm Hawaiʻi time Thursdays as of June 2021! To support our productions please like, share and subscribe! Mahalo! USGS Image & caption: "This Unoccupied Aircraft Systems (UAS) photo, looking straight down into the inactive western fissure within Halema‘uma‘u at the summit of Kīlauea, was captured on Thursday, June 3, 2021. One of the objectives of the UAS mission was to get a close-up look into the fissure to see if any incandescent lava was still visible. As evidenced by the darkness within the opening atop the fissure (center of frame), no active lava was observed. For scale, the height and width of this photo each span approximately 40 m (131 ft) laterally."