KILAUEA’S CURRENT SUMMIT ERUPTION WILL LIKELY BE TALKED ABOUT FOR GENERATIONS—fourteen months of spectacularly high fountains viewed by tens of thousands of national park visitors and by millions more worldwide via USGS livestreams and other internet sites and news feeds. And this stunning eruptive dynamic continues . . . at least for the moment.
Since my last Kilauea post in May 2025, we’ve had many more high fountain episodes, including at least one that towered 1,500 feet, and others spewing lava from as many as three vents simultaneously. We’ve also seen spectacular “precursory activity” that preceded those episodes: fireworks-like spattering and hydrogen flaring at the vents, giant pulsating lava domes, a “curtain of fire” spewing lava from the crater wall, and radiant lava rivers pouring out onto the vast, expanding lava lake at Halemaʻumaʻu. My wife and I have been among the throngs who’ve journeyed up to Kaluapele (“the pit of Pele”) to marvel at these historic events firsthand.
Photos by Tom Peek unless otherwise credited.
On the night of June 4, 2025 (Episode 24) Pele’s fountain split into a a mammoth heart that popped all our eyes!
Some of these Kilauea visitors come with reverence for the Hawaiian goddess Pelehonuamea, many with curiosity about volcanoes, and others just to check off another tourist “adventure” on their list. Regardless of motive, once in the presence of such profound beauty and impressive power, most—if not all—are awed and perhaps a bit disoriented. After experiencing firsthand such a formidable natural force, how does one go back to those urban landscapes that most Americans and others around the world now inhabit?
Also spectacular are the high gas plumes that tower above each eruption, including this one catching dawn’s first light on August 6, 2025 during Episode 30.
Three vents erupted lava on the night of August 6, 2025, including a fissure up the side of the crater wall that created a spectacular “curtain of fire.”
TO SEE MY VIDEOS OF SOME OF THE LATER ERUPTIONS VISIT MY NEW AUTHOR INSTAGRAM PAGE.
Residents, visitors, and pilgrims head the call . . .
Two to three times a month Pele has returned to the summit crater in spectacular displays, each one unique. And often she comes at night, setting the sky ablaze with her luminescent light. Gobsmacked residents and visitors huddle along the caldera rim and people across the globe tune into the spectacle via the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory’s livestreams.
Awestruck island residents and visitors packed a steamy stretch of caldera rim on the sacred pali at Wahine Kapu (bluff of the sacred woman) during the night of June 4. Far in the distance glowed the lights of the historic Volcano House Hotel.
Residents and visitors watching Pele dance on June 4, 2025.
On the one-year anniversary of the eruption (December 23, 2025) thousands gathered along the northwest rim of Kaluapele, undaunted by the chilly mist and wind. That night there were three towering fountains—the highest 1,400 feet!
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Forever changed by the experience . . .
My artist wife Catherine Robbins and I—both former eruption rangers at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park—have witnessed most of these 40-plus episodes firsthand, from various vantage points and at varying times of night and day. In addition to the mesmerizing visual marvels of the eruptions—wild combinations of light, fume, molten rock, and movement—we’re also struck by other wonders you cannot experience watching the USGS livestreams or scrolling through photographs. The Niagara Falls-like roar of the fountains, the warmth of the lava geysers when we’re at close range, and the clatter of lava particles striking the ground and vegetation (say nothing about the feeling of getting showered with tephra and Pele’s hair on two occasions).
A magical dawn during Episode 34 on October 1, 2025. From our remote rainforest perch atop a pali on the east side of Kaluapele, the combination of the two geysers’ roar with morning birdsong propelled our psyches back in time to more primordial epochs—yet it was all happening now!
Some nights with Pele seem surreal, including on December 23, 2025, the one-year anniversary of the eruption. In the presence of such wondrous spectacles—and the feelings they evoke—scientific descriptions fall flat.
Cath and I feel fortunate to live only a few miles from Halemaʻumaʻu, fully aware that there could also be danger in that close proximity—as there was during the devastating East Rift eruption in 2018 when the summit caldera collapsed and our home shook daily with countless earthquakes and numerous pressure waves. But we relish living on a landscape that is alive, dynamic, and continually beautiful and in a mountaintop community of people who also appreciate and respect that power. Folks up here love the volcano and its rainforest, and many draw spiritual and creative inspiration from the environment—Hawaiian cultural practitioners, artists, writers, and craftspeople. And why wouldn’t they? A potent creative force moves constantly under the surface of this place.
I felt similar feelings during the first half of my life living on an island in the Minnesota backwaters of the mighty Mississippi and making frequent sojourns to the great inland sea of Gitchigami (Lake Superior). Powerful places like these are reminders that we humans inhabit a living planet that deserves—indeed demands—our love and respect. Those who don’t understand that are simply out of touch. And can you blame them, with so many now living almost exclusively in man-made environments and in societies that value money, power, and store-bought stuff more than anything gifted to us by nature?
I’ve felt a similar primordial power on the the Upper Mississippi River in Minnesota and on shores of Gitchigami (Lake Superior) in Wisconsin and Minnesota. This photo was taken by my sister during a family visit to the lake’s North Shore in September 2025. I’m standing on 1.1 billion-year-old pahoehoe lava from an ancient rift eruption the began the process of creating the Great Lakes. (Photo by Anne Peek)
Growing crowds, parking nightmares . . .
With each of these now over 40 episodes, the crowds of onlookers and pilgrims have swelled into the thousands, overwhelming parking lots and roadsides in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park and cramming Highway 11, sometimes with miles of bumper-to-bumper vehicles waiting to get in. During one month alone, in November 2025, the park estimated its attendance at 157,000 people!
Parking spots in the national park are often hard to find, especially when fountaining begins during the daytime, as was the case with Episode 21 on June 29, 2025. What makes this even worse is when there are numerous “breaking news” eruption announcements posted on the internet or broadcast over the airways.
A Sunday morning eruption on June 29, 2025 resulted in a miles-long line of vehicles on Highway 11 waiting to get into the park. Pity the poor folks just trying to drive to the other side of the island via its well-used southern route through the district of Kaʻu.
Raining rocks and glass!
High fountains always generate tephra—lava fragments that include golden strands of glass called Pele’s hair and chunks of reticulite that look like frothy pieces of lava rock but weigh almost nothing and easily crush underfoot. When the prevailing trade winds blow, all that material deposits on the southwest side of the caldera—away from nearby populated areas—but if the winds are light or coming from the Kona side, that material can fall on Highway 11, key visitor areas inside the park, and on nearby communities, like Volcano Village.
During Episode 27, Light winds and strong propulsive fountains erupted showers of tephra toward the national park, the highway, and nearby communities on June 29, 2025. (Photo by Catherine Robbins)
Spectators gathered at a park overlook on the south side of Kaluapele (Kilauea caldera) on September 2, 2025. That day the vent’s internal shape cause the fountain to erupt at a sharp angle pointing northeastward, spewing clouds of tephra and Pele’s hair toward Volcano Village rather than downwind toward Kaʻu. (Photo by Catherine Robbins)
During Episode 40 I was shooting video on the caldera rim near the former site of the old Jaggar Museum—about a mile from the three towering fountains erupting that day—when a light shower of reticulite and Pele’s hair rained down on us. I immediately masked up, finished taking pictures and video, and a short while later left the area. Countless chunks of tephra crunched under my tires as I drove out of the parking lot. While I’d been dusted with Pele’s hair as an eruption ranger working near huge gas plumes from lava rivers pouring into the sea along the Kalapana Coast, I’d never been showered with chunks of reticulite! The intimacy of that awed me.
But that experience paled in comparison to what happened during the next episode, when Pele came to visit our rainforest cottage on January 24!
For several hours a shower of tephra pummeled our cottage, yard, and outbuildings—with chucks as big as 5 inches in diameter and 6 inches long! The cacophony of tephra bouncing on the buildings, lawn, and surrounding ferns and trees was enchanting, and the evolving scene surreal. It was only later, as I fully grokked how much lava material now covered our roofs and lawn (and the street in front of our house) that the difficult task of cleaning all that up really sunk in.
Tephra from Episode 41 on January 24 covered the street in front of our rainforest cottage.
As you can see from this USGS map of the tephra fallout, our Mauna Loa Estates subdivision, just east of Kilauea, was among the hardest hit. (USGS image)
Pele’s home has changed dramatically . . .
That lava-crusted molten lake is now much higher, having grown nearly 300 feet thicker since the eruption’s start on December 23, 2024. Hence, any eruptive activity is now visible from numerous spots along the caldera rim, and drivers approaching the park from the western Kaʻu side often spot the fiery fountains from the road. The spatter cone created by the vents now towers above the lake on a broad, high shield formed by numerous lava flows. Behind it, atop the caldera rim, is a new cone (or puʻu) of tephra (cone) that’s 150 feet deep.
And the lake has now spread to more than a 1,000 acres!
This is what the southwest end of Halemaʻumaʻu and its active vents looked like after one year and thirty-nine fountaining episodes.
WATCH THIS BRIEF HAWAIIAN VOLCANO OBSERVATORY VIDEO TO SEE THESE CHANGES AT HALEMAʻUMAʻU—FILMED FROM A USGS HELICOPTER (AFTER EPISODE 38).
What’s ahead?
Much has happened during this past year of summit eruptions—dozens of fountaining episodes from several different vents, a rapid rise and expansion of the lava lake, and then, in early 2026, a series of earthquake swarms under the summit that suggest magma is getting emplaced in new areas under the lake that could change the location of future vents.
What Pele does next is anyone’s guess. Will she stay in her legendary summit home at Halemaʻumaʻu, perhaps dancing from new vents on the lake? Or will she leave the summit and again erupt on one of the volcano’s rift zones?
Or is there something even more unusual ahead?
Makaʻala! Eyes open!
A rendering of Pelehonuamea by Kalapana artist Arthur Johnsen that was selected by a committee of Hawaiians elders for display at the Kilauea Visitors Center in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park.
Tom Peek