I was there today. We happened to notice the smoke over Kilauea while driving to Hilo, then checked out USGS cams, and immediately drove there and spent the next 7 hours getting mesmerized.
As my first eruption encounter, I didn’t expect to experience several things like the heat even from a long distance, enough to keep me warm in my shorts at 60F, and the loud rumble, like a giant waterfall. The flow of lava was way faster than I expected too, almost like oil.
Mind blown.
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