It's an extraordinary time on Kīlauea!

To help us understand what could happen at Kīlauea Volcano's summit, we look to past similar events, but this does not mean that future events will be exactly the same. This map shows the distribution of ballistics and tephra from the 1924 phreatic (steam-driven) explosions. Ballistics (blocks of rock) greater than 10 inches in size, with some weighing up to several tons, landed in the shaded pink area. Marble- to pea-sized rocks (about 0.2-10 inches in size) landed in the yellow shaded area. The surrounding light-colored area was subjected to gritty to fine ashfall, with fallout locations influenced by wind direction at the time of the explosions. The 1924 phreatic explosions are described at: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/geo_hist_1924_halemaumau.h…. USGS map.