One of the world’s most active volcanoes erupted on Monday after a three-month hiatus, spewing bright orange lava as high as 300 feet, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Kilauea volcano on Hawaii island, also known as the Big Island, began erupting at roughly 2:20 a.m. and continued throughout the day –– bringing packed crowds to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which is open to the public 24 hours a day.
The USGS also posted a livestream of the spectacle.
By 5:30 a.m., 500 acres of lava covered the caldera floor, a large basin that forms when a volcano erupts and collapses, according to the National Park Service.
“It’s a pretty exciting time … This is a really big voluminous eruption,” Ken Hon, the head scientist at USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a livestream chat.
“It was a fairly rapid onset for one of these eruptions. This is the fifth eruption that we’ve had in the summit area of Kilauea since December of 2020,” he said, adding that lava flows have already covered a 400-acre lava lake that began in 2020.