Mauna Loa erupted!
And I slept through it!
As most of you should know by now, Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano erupted on November 27, 2022 at 11:30 PM. And I was there, on the Big Island of Hawaii, on the south slope of Mauna Loa, and I slept through it!
That means that there are now two volcanoes actively releasing lava on the Big Island within 40 miles of each other!
On the 28th, my wife called me from Arizona and told me that the neighbor lady had just told her that Mauna Loa was erupting!
At that time, it was spewing lava at the summit from 1 or 2 fissures within the caldera (the crater at the peak of a volcano is called the caldera) and was all contained within the caldera. Later, it broke out of the caldera and started flowing down the northeast side of the mountain – the opposite side of the mountain from where my place is located.
Later that night as I was going to bed, I looked towards where the summit of the volcano was and I could see a red glow in the sky as if the sun had just disappeared below the hills. Very cool! By the time I could find my camera to try to get a picture, the clouds moved in and the red glow was gone – within a couple of minutes!
The most active fissure has been what they labeled as fissure 3 at about 11,500 feet elevation. This has sent lava down towards the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea where it is currently pooling between the two at about the 7,000 feet mark.
On Sunday, December 4th, we drove around to the saddle road (The major highway that runs between the two volcanoes and connects Hilo on the east side with Kona on the west) to see if we could catch a glimpse of the lava.
The weather was not being cooperative. We were at about 6000 feet elevation and heavy clouds were at about 8,000 feet, so we could not see the summit.
Looking across the saddle, once in a while we could see faint small flares of red as the lava burst through the front of the flow line, but most of the lava flowing down the side of the mountain was dark black, and undistinguishable from the older flows.
This is what we were hoping to be able to see:
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 