Aloha from Maui, the Magic Isle!

Well. over here on Maui we are getting a lot of the Vog from the Big Island. Madame Pele is starting up her fiery show again after being pretty quiet (for her, anyhow) for about nine months. There hasn't been any lava from Kilauea entering the ocean since last June, but now the spectacle of molten rock sliding into a hissing ocean is again enthralling hundreds of onlookers. The officials on the Big Island have built a road that will allow folks to drive nearly up to the area where they can watch the phenomenon. The sightseers just have to park and then hike about half a mile to the safe viewing spot. The County has supplied porta-potties and emergency water. But that is pretty rugged terrain that the folks are going to have to traverse, and there's no shade, either. Me, I'm staying cosily at home. I'll watch it on the TV news!

Madame Pele has been throwing her weight around for twenty-five years now. This current eruption began in January of 1983. Actually, as volcano goddesses go, Pele is pretty kind, if that's the right word. There aren't the terrible explosions and nasty showers of volcanic matter, like the stuff that buried Pompei in Italy back in Roman times. What comes out of Kilauea usually is pahoehoe lava which reminds me of taffy. Well, it's red hot 2000 degree taffy, but I think it's beautiful. It's kind of ropey-looking and it moves slowly.

Once that taffy stars moving, however, nothing stops it. There used to be a lovely ancient Hawaiian fishing village on the coast near where the lava is flowing now, called Kalapana. The lava reached it in 1986, but it didn't do too much damage then. The lava stopped for a few years, but another flow reached Kalapana in June of 1990. You can just imagine the resident's feelings as they watched the lava rolling slowly into town. One house after another went up in flames as the residents further down the road were frantically trying to get their goods out of their houses before the lava reached them. By September 1990, lava had covered Kalapana with about 30 feet of pahoehoe lava. Lovely Kalapana is no more...