This weekend we had a little fireworks at the Halema’uma’u vent. Friday night/early Saturday morning there were small earthquakes with accompanying flares of incandescence from the vent. “Distinct incandescent ejecta”, as USGS puts it, was observed on at least one occasion during the hours of darkness. Translated, they saw a little bit of stuff like […]

Volcano Fireworks 1 - © U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Geological SurveyOn the other side of the island from Kona, lava has been entering the ocean and sometimes causing spectacular explosions. Here are two USGS shots from July 16. Those are not man-made fireworks. What you’re seeing are incandescent parabolic arcs at the Waikupanaha (y-coo-pan-ah-ha) […]

Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle may get a reply soon to her request that Hawaii County be declared a disaster area because of the emissions from the volcano. She had formally made the request a month ago to Edward Schafer, USDA Secretary, along with a parallel request to Stephen Johnson, EPA Administrator, asking for aid in […]

Well, in any event, it’s breathing. Not actually breathing, of course, but there have been ‘blowing noises’ coming from the Halema’uma’u vent since Sunday. USGS originally described the sound as ‘vent noises’, and ‘vent sounds’, but on Tuesday decided they were ‘blowing sounds’. Whatever. The bottom line is that something new is happening.
What does it […]

The usual coffee picking season here in Kona is late August through late January. Guess what. Some farms here in Kona Coffee country have already started picking coffee cherry. This presents some benefits for coffee consumers, but a two-sided coin for coffee farmers.
First, the benefits. Peaberry coffee, always a scarce commodity, should be in greater […]

Before we get too excited, it wasn’t much of a roar, and the rumble was just some more rockslides.
Actually, the incandescence at the Halema’uma’u vent has been softer of late, with much less of the pulsing we saw last week. But at least once when the vent dimmed, there was the clatter of a rockslide […]

(Dear BTC reader. I apologize for it taking this long to post the second part of this. They thought the Volcano Updates should take precedence. But here it is now. I hope they know what they are doing. Ed.)
Link to Part One
continued…
Pat: That’s okay. I’ll take the heat. I’d like BehindTheCoffee.com to be real. And […]

As I promised, activity at the volcano is changing. That was a safe bet. Shortly after midnight last night, there were two explosive events at the Halema’uma’u vent that were in the same range as the explosions of April 9 and 16 at that vent. Each caused the vent to go dark for several minutes.
The […]

At the end of June, the vent at Halema’uma’u started pulsing a pretty evenly at once every 6 minutes (see previous post). Then on the night of the 1st of July, it slowed down a little to a pulse 6 to 7 minutes apart.
But the last two days, it has speeded up to a pulse […]

I have not been updating the volcano news because it has been pretty constantly the same. Just lots and lots of vog, with no new activity, which is pretty boring to hear about day after day. And as I’ve mentioned before, the coffee trees of Kona are still having a great time with it. But […]