Just got back from 2 weeks in Hawaii - have a ton of catching up to do on the forums (work can wait).
Anyways, here is a picture I took from our helicopter of Kilauea volcano
an hour and a half before it erupted! We feel super lucky to have been there when it started erupting (to have experienced a force of nature like that), but also super lucky to be staying an hour away from the volcano (far out of harms way). Thankfully, there have been no injuries or deaths so far (this type of eruption is easy to avoid).
First, there's all the earthquakes you feel with the biggest one being a 6.9 (biggest one I've ever felt). We felt around 10 earthquakes where we were staying (out of the 1o0's per day that occurred), the biggest being 6.9 with the epicenter being near the eruption; the closest earthquake to us had an epicenter that was 2 km away from our house, 5km deep and a 4.3 on the scale.
Second there will be cracks (fissures) that occur, the first one was noticed in someone's driveway and it ran underneath the house (most likely destroyed).
Finally the lava will start to flow up through the cracks at an increasing rate. When we left Hawaii, there was only one fissure and 3 homes destroyed; now there are 10+ fissures with 26 homes destroyed.
The actual "eruption" occurred about 2 miles to the left of this picture. The lava flows in "lava tubes" underground and once those tubes can't go any further underground, the lava goes up and that's where the eruption occurred.
