USGS info: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea
Timeline: https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/volcano-updates/volca...
Three weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db9qvUWYgcQ
Even a mile away we felt some heat! Astounding amount of energy literally spewing from Earths core
Uhh what the heck is a plume anyway?
We kept the Kilauea YT stream going 24/7 and just waited till it started and then drove over.
There is one public bus that goes around and once I was the only passenger and the driver stopped the bus near the ocean to show the travelling whales/dolphins.
> You can drive less than an hour and go from desert to snow and snow to tropical.
You can drive from the beach on the leeward side, going past dry ranchland with an average annual rainfall of ~10-15" (similar to arid West Texas places like Midland), to the Mauna Kea Observatory, where snow can sometimes be found, in under an hour and a half; and from there across to the windward side, back to the beach at Hilo, with about 10 feet of rain a year, in another hour and 15 minutes or so.
Truly wild and must be seen to be believed.
And as you say, snow, whereas we'd been on the beach just a couple of hours before. Guide didn't drive straight up due to acclimatization and I still got slightly dizzy up there, it's over 4200m (13800 ft) up there after all.
While the Big Island is certainly much larger than the other Hawaiian islands, it's not huge. We did day trips covering about a third of the island, including multiple tourist-y stops. And yea the nature there kept surprising us again and again.
The predominant wind is from the east, and the air cools aid forms rainclouds as it tries to rise over the mountains in the center of the island. Then warms again as it descends down the eastern slopes.
So the eastern (Hilo) side is pretty lush jungle, and the west(Kona) is desert. With snowy mountains in between.
[0]https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/rain-s...
It's almost like you can see the line across the terrain.
