One of the world’s most active volcanoes, Kilauea in Hawaii, has resumed erupting after nearly a monthlong pause in activity, scientists said.
Just after 4:30 p.m. local time on Thursday, a glow was detected at the volcano’s summit in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, on the Big Island of Hawaii, according to a news release from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Officials said that volcanic activity was confined to a crater on the summit and that they would monitor hazards as the eruption progresses.
“The opening phases of eruptions are dynamic,” the news release said. “Webcam imagery shows fissures at the base of Halemaʻumaʻu crater generating lava flows on the surface of the crater floor.”
By late Thursday, lava had covered about 300 acres, officials said.
Video of the eruption on the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park’s Twitter account showed a bright orange lava fountain swiftly moving during the first hour of eruption. By nightfall, glowing lava was visible from several areas around the volcano’s caldera.
The spectacular eruption on Thursday came a little more than three weeks after the U.S. Geological Survey said that Kilauea and Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano, which began erupting in November for the first time in nearly 40 years, had stopped erupting.
At the time, scientists were unsure whether the timing was coincidental.
While the two volcanoes share the same magma source, officials said in a separate news release on Thursday that Mauna Loa was not erupting and that there were no signs of activity.
“When Mauna Loa is frequently active, Kilauea tends to be less active, and vice versa,” Jim Kauahikaua, a volcanologist with the U.S.G.S. Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said last year, adding that this relationship is somewhat speculative given the limited scope of recorded data.
Kilauea has erupted almost continuously from 1983 until 2018, when a monthslong eruption produced 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of lava that transformed the surrounding landscape and destroyed around 700 homes.