Elegy for a vent in a Hawaiian volcano | Hacker News Reader

Elegy for a vent in a Hawaiian volcano

washingtonpost.com

55 pointspseudolus16 comments

Two years ago I had the pleasure of flying over Pu‘u‘O‘o on Kīlauea in a helicopter. One of my best memories in Hawaii, second to getting married ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k2hIvC1quE&feature=youtu.be

I visited the Big Island in November. Probably every tourist, myself included, asks the rangers if there really is no magma, even though there are new signs everywhere stating this fact. But there really isn't, anywhere on the island, for the first time in 35 years.

Kilauea is a fascinating volcano, and https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/geo_hist_summar... is a great resource.

This is probably related to last summer's eruptions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_lower_Puna_eruption, same system but downrift)

It's all effectively the same eruption.

A brief history: in 1983, Kilauea started erupting out of Pu'o 'O'o. That eruption sent out multiple flows of lava, mostly south to the ocean, but one flank did threaten the access road to lower Puna--before dying within a few hundred feet of the road. In 2008, lava returned to the summit at Halemaumau crater, once again creating a lava lake there. Then, in April 2018, the big earthquake caused the lava to cease at both Halemaumau and Pu'o 'O'o. About a week later, lava came out in lower Puna, although the fresh Pu'o 'O'o lava didn't arrive until June I think. Meanwhile, the draining of the summit caused it to start collapsing in a periodic series of explosions.

To give a sense of how impressive the 2018 episode was, here's a link to the monitoring data for Kilauea: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/monitoring_data... -- the spike in earthquakes and deflation is the 2018 eruption stuff that made the news big time.

Dunno, looks like the chamber is slowly refilling as the surface slowly moves upwards, so it's likely just end of one cycle. Last year those lava shots were breathtaking and lasted unexpectedly long, increasing surface area of Big Island considerably, so it might take a while until it reaches surface again.

“Leaving us with more questions than answers may be the greatest gift of this eruption,” Caplan-Auerbach wrote on Twitter.

Lovely true scientist sentiment.

All I get is a paywall. Seeing as im in hawaii on vacation this is interesting to me, wish i could actually find this useful. ;(

https://outline.com/VdGHt6

Elegy? Is that American for "Eulogy" or a different word?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elegy has a large section discussing the different usage and roots.

The American word for eulogy is eulogy. Never heard of elegy before, but according to the dictionary it's synonyms are dirge and lament. "A sad poem or song" —Merriam-Webster

Elegy is a poem of lament, where as Eulogy is writing about something or someone who has died. Eulogy would suit this piece better.

You don't have to be so elegiac about the title.

An elegy is a poem for a sad occasion/death, similar to requiem, dirge or threnody

It’s the word for a sad story or poem, lamenting the death of peoples‘ skill to look up questions as they arise, instead of making a handful of people doing that work for them.

Alternatively, it laments the tendency to frame a rather inferior attack in the form of a long-winded question. This usually happens at conferences, but can also be observed in online communications.

I truly do not understand this mentality. Why not simply check / look up the word? You don't even have to try a dictionary these days, google will give you definitions if you just use a word as a search term.

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