Indeed. I just wish we could get a better sense of the scale, which is always hard in nature shots devoid of trees or human structures. A productive use of AI would be to place some houses and automobiles in the video for scale.
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is absolutely stunning (and safe, away from the closed area). It's like being on a different planet. If you haven't been to the Big Island and the park, you should add it to your bucket list.
This was incredible to watch, and I have to chuckle at this title. It's obvious why the webcam matters, with people round the world watching, but the destruction of a webcam is such a tiny thing in comparison to the eruption itself it's strangely funny.
Kilauea is more or less constantly erupting. This is the 38th eruptive episode since in the past year: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/science/eruption-info... (note that the 38th episode started a few hours ago as of this message). Although this is still considered "one" eruption by USGS.
The threat level for airplanes is set to orange... for anyone dumb enough to fly over an erupting volcano. The orange flying from the ground would be all the motivation I need to stay clear of it.
I dunno... Different times, different risk tolerance.
Back in 1980, my dad was sitting at his desk in Bellevue one morning when news came in that Mt. St. Helens was erupting. Him and a pilot friend had the presence of mind to head straight to the local airport and rent a plane.
"Be careful not to head South. Mt. St. Helens is erupting, and you sure don't want to get close that by accident."
"Oh, yeah, sure. No way we'd do something like that."
He has this amazing framed aerial photo of the mountain with the ash plume rising. Evidently, the flight home was pure chaos, bobbing and weaving to avoid dozens of midair collisions since every other pilot in the Seattle area had had the same idea, but 45 minutes later.
It's wild to see this footage safely behind a monitor. Kind of macabre to ponder but I wonder if the victims of Pompeii had a similar experience. The last we see is a hailstorm of ash and molten lava raining down then signal lost.
When I walked across the crater as a kid, I remember there was an inner crater that I was told had filled up with lava back in the 80s and then drained down leaving a deep well. Does someone have a map of the historical eruption locations within the main summit crater?
I'd love to learn more about the specific failure mode towards the end. As the eruption debris approach the camera, we see glowing rock up close. The camera then flashes purple for some reason, goes black, then returns to streaming for a few more seconds, recording a vague orange glow. After that, it's gone for good.
I was there today. We happened to notice the smoke over Kilauea while driving to Hilo, then checked out USGS cams, and immediately drove there and spent the next 7 hours getting mesmerized.
As my first eruption encounter, I didn’t expect to experience several things like the heat even from a long distance, enough to keep me warm in my shorts at 60F, and the loud rumble, like a giant waterfall. The flow of lava was way faster than I expected too, almost like oil.
Hawaii volcanism is what geologists seem to call "nice and friendly" - low viscosity lava, not prone to explosive eruptions (unlike the stratovolcanoes of the Andes or the Pacific rim in general) - this is because it's caused by hotspot volcanism in Hawaii.
I was at the Fagradalsfjall eruption at 2023. Had been to Iceland for two weeks w wife and daughter, and on the last day (since the signs were there) I decided to postpone travel home for two days (w + child wanted to go home). On my last day, the hike opened up and I went at approx 2100 hours to the volcano. That was an approx 10 km hike one way.
Amazing experience. A bunch of us were stupid as can be, but got as close as approx 50 m. Sounds really dangerous, but the sputter were not that violent yet, and the ground sloped away from us. Still, really stupidly dangerous (the sputter wall could've broken down, wind direction change, etc). But it didn't. Lots of moss fires, and walked into a small slope and immediately felt a sting in my nose and lungs from trapped gases so took that as a nope and went back.
Started walking back at 0130 something, boarded flight at 0600, fainted (I had done Mt Esja in the morning too). Sorry other passengers, it was inconsiderate of me and I was an asshole for that. But... that experience...!
Same here. I'd add that viewing the lava fountain at night was a mesmerizing experience. You get to see the full extent of red, glowing lava lake and the fountain. There were thousands of people and yet they appeared so small in front of the volcano. We did experience some ash and Pele's hair on the way to the park, near the black sand beach. I do recommend carrying a torch though at night, since it is pitch black at night. The lava illuminated the park with the red glow, but there were some parts where you do need a torch esp. if you park far away and walk.
I am severely tempted to hop on a flight to go and see it, but wondering if it's such a "once in a lifetime" thing to go see? That, and if it'll peter out by the time I get there, and $500+ to just fly on a whim and stay overnight.
Probably this amazing capture is worth more than a hundred times the price of the camera, yet the geek in me feels really sad when perfectly functional hardware gets destroyed :)
Definitely don't think about how much "nice" equipment is bought, used once or twice and then sits in a cupboard forever until disposed of in a skip when someone dies or a company goes under and the building is cleared.
My last place had a whole box full of FPGA dev boards that I would have killed to play with as an undergrad.
The real pities are in machining where what looks like a junk heap to the family may actually be a priceless trove of rare tools and irreplaceable machine parts. Not to mention lovingly-made tools and jigs. A physical cousin to unpublished software sitting on a thrown-away hard drive.
Worth watching: Into the Inferno, a film by Werner Herzog in which he depicts the relationship between active volcanoes and the humans who live in their shadows.
The Big Island of Hawaii and the national park there is an amazing place. One of the only places where you can (relatively) safely visit a highly active volcano.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadhttps://m.youtube.com/usgs/live
It was an awesome video, though.
Back in 1980, my dad was sitting at his desk in Bellevue one morning when news came in that Mt. St. Helens was erupting. Him and a pilot friend had the presence of mind to head straight to the local airport and rent a plane.
"Be careful not to head South. Mt. St. Helens is erupting, and you sure don't want to get close that by accident."
"Oh, yeah, sure. No way we'd do something like that."
He has this amazing framed aerial photo of the mountain with the ash plume rising. Evidently, the flight home was pure chaos, bobbing and weaving to avoid dozens of midair collisions since every other pilot in the Seattle area had had the same idea, but 45 minutes later.
Now someone timejump to krakatau, year 1883 ...
Yes, that matters. People want to know if what they are looking at or listening to is AI or not.
[1] https://youtu.be/oc2Pr3YiRO0?si=UJInJ_wLzitdKec8
As my first eruption encounter, I didn’t expect to experience several things like the heat even from a long distance, enough to keep me warm in my shorts at 60F, and the loud rumble, like a giant waterfall. The flow of lava was way faster than I expected too, almost like oil.
Mind blown.
Amazing experience. A bunch of us were stupid as can be, but got as close as approx 50 m. Sounds really dangerous, but the sputter were not that violent yet, and the ground sloped away from us. Still, really stupidly dangerous (the sputter wall could've broken down, wind direction change, etc). But it didn't. Lots of moss fires, and walked into a small slope and immediately felt a sting in my nose and lungs from trapped gases so took that as a nope and went back.
Started walking back at 0130 something, boarded flight at 0600, fainted (I had done Mt Esja in the morning too). Sorry other passengers, it was inconsiderate of me and I was an asshole for that. But... that experience...!
Depends how close you go to see.
If you wanna see it more than once, don't go too close.
That said, it feels like a once in a lifetime experience, yes. See my video: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE4NDM1Nzg1OTAyMTA0...
My last place had a whole box full of FPGA dev boards that I would have killed to play with as an undergrad.
The real pities are in machining where what looks like a junk heap to the family may actually be a priceless trove of rare tools and irreplaceable machine parts. Not to mention lovingly-made tools and jigs. A physical cousin to unpublished software sitting on a thrown-away hard drive.
I wasn't even realizing it without reading this in the description.