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 […]

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 […]

In Kona, yes, but where exactly?
Before I answer that, let me take you for an entirely pleasant journey of the Kona Coffee District circa 1866. That was the year Samuel Clemens … sorry, I mean Mark Twain… took a voyage from San Francisco to the islands of Hawaii Nei, and sent back dispatches to the […]

Today the gas emissions from the volcano have blanketed Kailua Kona. So thick is the cloud that one cannot see common landmarks up mauka (mauka means away from the sea, toward the center of the island; in Kona, toward the inactive volcano Hualalai.) Going along Queen Kaahumanu Highway (Hwy. 11, the Belt Road) looking mauka, […]

The vent at Halemaumau switched back to full ash production, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s United States Geological Survey, at 4:40 pm Hawaii Standard Time, Friday, March 28. So the steam and gas phase of the eruption was only about 36 hours long. One assumes it could go back and forth in […]

The scientist in charge at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory is calling the recent ash eruption in the Halemaumau crater at Kilauea “unprecedented”. Geophysicist Jim Kauahikaua (PhD from UH Manoa, ‘83) held a press briefing Wednesday morning, March 26 at the Jagger Museum in the town of Volcano, which is near Volcanoes park but not too […]

On Sunday evening, March 23, 2008, molten lava started spewing from the vent at Halemaumau. It is the first magma to erupt from the huge crater since 1982. String-like lava as fine as spun glass, droplets, and spatter fragments as large as four inches in diameter were ejected as far as the rim of the […]

All the vents at Kilauea together are now producing between 8,8000,000 and 10,000,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide daily. Thats up to ten million pounds a day. 330,000 pounds per day is considered ‘normal’. So we are seeing concentrations of over thirty times normal. At 1 part per million in the air, sulfur dioxide can […]

Um, the volcano on this island is having a bit too much fun.
Sulphur dioxide emissions have some days been as high at 4,000,000 lbs. That’s four million pounds per day. Makes for pretty sunsets, but I wondered if I was in Los Angeles for a moment. No… even with vog, Kona is not Los Angeles. […]

I stand corrected. Mark has noticed that I intimated in my previous blog that some ‘really, really toasty’ roasted coffee might find it’s way into the Kona Blends. Not so. The big processors buy only green beans. So I still don’t know what he does in case he ever makes a mistake with a batch.
But… […]